Council supportive of impact fees bill, have preliminary discussion on fire/EMS fees
Council members and staff in the county's division of planning and permitting workshopped a bill introduced by Councilman
Impact fees are one-time fees paid by developers countywide to help support growing school and library systems.
Donald said Friday the bill is mostly a tune-up of a bill he and Councilman
One, he said, is that the bill provides a monetary credit for developers who dedicate land for public school sites. The other is it prevents developers for essentially paying twice for the same impact fees, in case building permits expire and the land is transferred to one developer from another, Donald added.
That latter change came in part due to this opponent during the 2018 election,
Donald, McKay and Councilman
The county has only been collecting the land component portion of those impact fees since Donald and McKay's bill was passed last year, Hessong added. Those range in the hundreds of dollars depending on the type of development--a small portion of the overall impact fees--he said.
Outside of the bill itself, Donald asked county staff during the council workshop last week whether it was legal to adopt impact fees for fire and rescue services, given the growing demand for those countywide.
Kinnally said in an email that "
Hagen and Hessong said there has been discussion about those types of impact fees in the past, with Hessong adding most of the discussions has been about firefighter and EMS fees.
The issue is complex, Hessong noted, because determining what is "adequate" firefighter and emergency medical services could depend on residential versus non-residential areas, age-restricted versus other types of housing, along with overall response times in each area.
"It's always hard to identify that rational nexus," Hessong said, which indicates a key part of what determines the impact fees.
Horn agreed, noting the county's geography during the workshop.
"It gets pretty subjective and
Still, McKay, Hagen and Donald said they were interested in having further conversations about whether those types of fees could be implemented in
For Donald, it's a policy question of whether developers and homeowners should pay for those services in faster-growing areas of the county, versus sharing those costs among all county taxpayers.
"If you look at fire and rescue [and] emergency services, those costs do go up as we expand the housing stock in the county," Donald said.
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