- April 25, 2024
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The fees are intended to be more fair and flexible to residents and business owners.
The city’s new impact fee system could include discount incentives, installment plans and an altered fee structure, according to a proposal presented Thursday, April 12, at a city workshop.
Impact fees, which attempt to measure the degree of wear and tear to city roadways surrounding commercial and residential land, are currently charged to owners to account for routine maintenance on or around their property, such as road-repaving.
“We’re doing all these things for fairness,” said Nestor Abreu, community development director.
Under the new plan, impact fees for changes of property use — a store changing hands and becoming an auto shop, for example — would be waived for all buildings permitted prior to 1999, when the city incorporated.
Staff also proposed a simplified fee structure, which developers, rather than business owners, would be responsible to pay for. Fees would be combined and averaged based on unified classifications — residential, restaurant, retail, etc. — instead of breaking each down into subcategories with “outdated” and “seemingly arbitrary” rates for classifications such as fast-food restaurant, high quality restaurant and high turnover restaurant.
Also, City Manager Jim Landon added, because impact fees are currently so much higher for something like medical offices than retail offices, many developers won’t allow doctors to rent in their facilities. A group average opens it up and encourages business, he said, in accordance with the goals outlined in Prosperity 2021.
Several members of the City Council, including Mayor Jon Netts, voiced concern over how fees would be combined, to which staff offered to present several different options at a later date.
Business owners will now have the option to pay impact fees over a 12- or 24-month period, which should reduce the amount of upfront cash needed to launch a business.
But Netts said that could put the city in a bad position, if a business were to fail but still be forced to pay fees after the fact.
“Be prepared that there’s a downside to being a nice guy,” he said. “ … I think it will help these little business that need help getting started … but a vast number of business fail in the first year.”
Then again, if a business shuts down, he continued, there would be no impact on the city.
Contact Mike Cavaliere at [email protected].
