Impact fees are still an unknown variable

A year ago today, Central Valley School District asked elected officials to charge developers for some of the costs associated with its swelling student population.

The answers so far from Liberty Lake, Spokane Valley and Spokane County: probably, maybe and no.

The district didn’t set a specific schedule when it asked for the impact fees, which only the municipalities can enact.

“It’s really up to the governments to deal with it,” Superintendent Mike Pearson said.

In the meantime, the district is grappling with what to do as it expects to reach capacity next August.

Voters rejected two bond measures last year that would have built a new elementary school and middle school and improved other schools.

Before the bonds went before voters, the school board had also asked for a $1,410 fee for each new house.

The Liberty Lake City Council passed a resolution in September endorsing the idea and encouraging the county and Spokane Valley to also enact the fees.

It will take another council action to actually enact the fees. Pearson said the district is working closely with Liberty Lake to allay concerns the city had with the school district’s capital facilities plan before the fees go before the council again.

While county Commissioner Mark Richard said he is happy to meet with the school district and discuss other funding options, the impact fee proposal is unlikely to come before the board of commissioners.

“It’s hard, to me, to draw a direct correlation and assess a fee assuming that all of the new houses have children in them,” he said.

Richard said he supported Central Valley’s bond measures but considers the fees unfair because they do not apply to families moving into existing neighborhoods.

The Spokane Valley City Council has held off debating the school district’s request until it can go over the possibility of impact fees for parks and roads, also.

“That’s going to take a lot of discussion,” said Mayor Diana Wilhite.

Although the city hasn’t forgotten about the school district, Wilhite said, impact fees haven’t made it onto the agenda for any future meeting.

“Some other things we have to get done,” Wilhite said, citing the city’s new land-use plan and the regulations that go with it. “We have some state-mandated deadlines.”

The council might take up the fees by fall, she said.

The city has $95,000 set aside in the 2007 budget for an impact fee study. But the council is unlikely to discuss the issue until an ongoing study on city street maintenance is completed.

Any council vote on impact fees for schools probably wouldn’t be unanimous, said Wilhite, but she hasn’t polled her colleagues on whether they would support them.

The mayor said she will have to consider the fee’s potential impact on home prices.

She also pointed out that the cost for new schools go well beyond what the fees would bring in.

Analysis of newly created lots and those with applications pending suggest the fees could apply to about 6,000 new residences and generate more than $6 million as those homes are built.

“They could produce a very small part of the cost of a new facility,” said Dave Jackman, the district’s director of auxiliary services.

But even if the fees amounted to only a fraction of the cost of a new school, they are still politically charged.

At city meetings and political gatherings, voters regularly bring up impact fees. Some have even said they refused to support the district’s bond proposals because the fees weren’t in place.

More recently, the district also asked Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake and Spokane County to stop approving new housing in the district because it will not have room for the children who move in.

None indicated it is likely to stop issuing building permits.