Impact fee in slow lane

A new-home fee of $1,410 sought to ease the growing pains of Central Valley School District doesn’t seem to be gaining traction among the city and county governments expected to collect it.

Only one of three government agencies asked six weeks ago to consider the fee is working on a plan to collect it. Liberty Lake Mayor Steve Peterson said his City Council could have something to look at within weeks. And there is a feeling among council members that good schools are crucial to building good neighborhoods.

Leaders of the other two governments involved in the proposal – Spokane Valley and Spokane County – say they have no plans to discuss the matter anytime soon.

In January, Central Valley officials informed the three governments that construction costs directly tied to new housing were piling up. Specifically, the district would like to put impact fees toward a new $12.8 million middle school in the works for the eastern portion of the district where hundreds of homes have been built since 2000. In that corner of the district, developers have unveiled plans for 2,000 new homes just north of I-90 between Harvard and Barker roads. And to the southeast, hundreds of new housing lots have also been platted.

The impact fees Central Valley is proposing would generate more than $6 million if collected from the anticipated addition of 6,000 homes over the next 10 years or so.

Many of the schools in the east end of the 80-square-mile district are near or over capacity now. The district as a whole has seen enrollment jump 3 percent the past two years, after a decade or more of a gradual 1 percent per year increase in the student population.

But school impact fees have a shaky history in these parts, where elected officials wince at the thought of adversely affecting the housing boom. Since 1997, when the Legislature empowered local governments to collect impact fee money for schools, parks, roads and emergency service, only one Eastern Washington community, Medical Lake, has routinely collected the money. Doug Ross, the town’s public works director, said Medical Lake collects $268 for schools whenever someone applies for a home-building permit. The town also collects $316 for parks and $104 for its fire department.

The sum of the three fees imposed by Medical Lake is a great deal less than what cities in Western Washington charge for schools alone, but it is still controversial, Ross said.

Impact fees collected in Pierce, King and Skagit counties for schools run from $278 to $4,617.

But in conservative Eastern Washington, it’s hard to collect an impact fee on new homes, knowing that some of the people moving in have no children to send to school, said Spokane County Commissioner Mark Richard. And other new homebuyers are local people who have spent years paying off school bonds already. It would be a lot easier, Richard said, to collect impact fees for roads, which it’s understood every new homeowner will use.

“I suppose if Central Valley wrote a letter asking us to discuss it, we would,” Richard said. “Personally, it’s not that I’m diametrically opposed to this, but you know every new homeowner has a car, not every new homeowner has schoolchildren.”

Other Western states have embraced impact fees but drawn the line at collecting them for schools. Oregon, Idaho and Montana collect impact fees for infrastructure and public safety. None has collected impact fee money for schools, at least not yet. Rising school costs tied to swelling enrollments has Washington’s neighbors at least interested in one-time new-home fees for schools. A school impact fee bill is halfway through the Idaho Legislature. And Montana passed school impact fee legislation in 2005. In Oregon, where school impact fee bills died in 2003 and 2005, public school advocates are talking about circumventing politicians and acquiring impact fees though the initiative process.

It’s not that impact fees are off the table, Spokane Valley Mayor Diana Wilhite said. But her city sees schools as just a small piece of the puzzle. She believes her City Council might be ready for a bigger debate on the matter in about six months.

“Impact fees are probably something we’re going to look at, but it can’t just be for schools,” Wilhite said. “Central Valley is of interest to us because it makes up the bulk of our city. It’s a big part of our quality of life.”

Meanwhile, Central Valley is asking voters to approve both a construction bond and a replacement of the maintenance and operations levy. The three-year levy would cost homeowners $3.50 per $1,000 assessed valuation. A $55.2 million construction bond would pay to remodel three aging district elementary schools and pay for two new school buildings in the eastern half of the district where new home construction is brisk. The bond rate is $0.60 per $1,000. Central Valley would be required to cut its budget by $19 million per year if the levy does not meet the 60 percent supermajority vote needed to pass.