The Aberdeen City Council has rejected a proposal to replace the city’s one-time $25 business license fee to a $25 annual fee. The plan narrowly made it past an earlier council hurdle on a 5-4 vote, but Wednesday the council killed it by a vote of 8-s.

During the first reading of the proposal, Mayor Erik Larson and Finance Director Mike Folkers said the one-time license fee of $25 gave no motivation to local businesses to make sure the city has up-to-date contact information for them. By renewing the fee every year, the city would be able to get hold of business owners about matters that pertain to them.

“I met with finance director Folkers this afternoon and got a good idea of what’s going on,” said Councilman Jeff Cook. “Currently, there are 2,000 commercial business licenses in the city. Each of those businesses is supposed to send in a quarterly report, but half of those say they don’t do them.” Cook then proposed an amendment to the proposal that would drop the fee to $15 annually.

Councilwoman Tawni Edwards voiced her support for the amended proposal, but the amendment went down by an 8-3 vote.

Councilwoman Karen Rowe was outspoken against the proposal during its first reading in May, saying local businesses don’t need the burden of any additional fees added to existing expenses. At Wednesday’s meeting, she repeated those concerns.

“I have letters from a number of different businesses, and what I’m hearing is the cost of the annual permit doesn’t matter; it’s adding this on top of everything else. We have one of the highest B&O taxes in the state, one of the highest sales tax rates in the state, and we’re still considered an economically depressed area. For a lot of us it’s not the dollar amount, it’s that we’re not getting a return on our investment. We’ve invested in this city as business owners and we aren’t seeing much back from the city. How is the city supporting us, in promotion, or some sort of tax benefit or something?”