A decision by the Indiana Supreme Court regarding rental fees could cost the city of West Lafayette a large sum of money. The court’s decision eliminates a carve-out that had allowed the cities of Bloomington and West Lafayette -- with their large, transient college populations -- to charge more than $5 per unit for inspections or to register the unit with the city. Last year, the West Lafayette City Council redrew an existing rental inspection ordinance to streamline some of the fees charged to landlords for city-run inspections of their buildings. Those costs would have become easier to calculate, but were also slated to be significantly higher when they went into effect this June. Susan Morris, who co-owns West Lafayette-based Morris Rentals and the more than 100 units it operates, says the increase would have been a burden. “They had talked about increasing that by over a hundred percent,” Morris says. West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis argues the decision doesn’t recognize the
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