The City of Lawrence’s plan to start charging a new fee for commercial and multifamily building projects makes sense as long as it achieves the efficiencies the city promises.

The additional fee is meant to fund a new position — a senior building inspector — that will provide additional review for large-scale developments. The senior inspector will help to manage, review and inspect large commercial and multifamily projects.

The City Commission approved the plan review fee as part of next year’s budget. The new fee will go into effect in January.

The new fee could add thousands of dollars to the cost of commercial and apartment projects. The new fee is 20 percent of the current building permit fee, which is based on the dollar value of the building project. For example, a $25 million project requires about $44,000 in permit fees. The new fee would be an additional $8,800.

Of late, Lawrence has had several large-scale commercial and multifamily projects, including 19 projects of $1 million or more in 2015 when a record-breaking $227 million of new construction took place.

Kurt Schroeder, assistant director of development services for the city, said the new position will allow the city to provide better inspection services in a more timely fashion.

“We want to make sure we’re inspecting and keeping all the buildings safe and code compliant, but we also want to make sure there are not delays in the service,” Schroeder said. “This, we think, will kind of help fill in some of the gaps we’re starting to see just because of the volume of inspection activity and plan review.”

Bill Fleming, an attorney representing some of Lawrence’s major developers, said his clients wouldn’t be upset with the new fee so long as it was reasonable and the city delivered on its promise of better service.

Major development projects in Lawrence don’t appear to be slowing anytime soon. Increasing fees to add staff to make sure the review and inspection process is thorough and timely is an appropriate step for the city to take.