Impact Fees Cause Some Second Thoughts Council To Reconsider Issue Tonight With Several Members Still Undecided

More than a year ago, a unanimous Spokane City Council began moving toward charging developers impact fees.

Now, after months of debate and planning, some council members are losing their enthusiasm for the fees.

“I think there’s some real questions as to whether these do the job,” Mayor Jack Geraghty said of the fees long sought by some residents and city officials in an attempt to ease the cost of growth.

“A $2,000 impact fee on 100 homes is going to raise $200,000,” Geraghty said. “That isn’t going to build a fire station or a park or a road. In fact, you don’t have a lot of money to do much of anything.”

Last week, the council delayed deciding whether to impose impact fees in seven of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods: Seven Mile, Indian Trail, Five Mile, Latah Creek, Qualchan, Moran Prairie and Calkins.

The money would be levied against developers to help pay for parks, fire stations and transportation near the areas being developed. None of the revenue would go to schools.

Tonight, the issue will come back before the council.

Councilman Orville Barnes served on the Five Mile Prairie committee that pushed for the fees nearly two years ago. He supported them at the time, but now he says he’s not so sure.

“There’s a little shock value once you get into it,” Barnes said. “Nothing is as good once you have all the facts.”

Geraghty also said he’s unsure.

New Councilman Jeff Colliton said he’s “leaning toward not voting for it.”

Council members Chris Anderson and Phyllis Holmes remain supporters of impact fees. Councilman Mike Brewer was out of town this weekend and couldn’t be reached for comment.

And Councilwoman Roberta Greene declined to say what her vote will be.

“I’m 99 percent sure what I’m going to do, but I’m still considering my options,” Greene said.

Last week, the council heard from developers and Realtors who said the fees would hurt home buyers and add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of new commercial buildings.

Geraghty and Barnes said they wonder whether the added dollars would do more harm than good. Developers already are paying for sewers, roads and utility extensions in their neighborhoods. Tack on impact fees and many might decide to build in the county where the fees aren’t required, the councilmen said.

In residential neighborhoods, Barnes and Geraghty said, impact fees wouldn’t solve growth-related problems.

“It really raises very few dollars” to help offset the cost of improving infrastructure, Barnes said. On the other hand, commercial developments would be hit hard, he said.

Barnes said his own calculations show the impact fee for a proposed grocery store near Latah Creek would top $1 million.

But Gerry Shrope, the city’s capital programs engineer, said Barnes’ calculation is about $600,000 too high.

The city already requires commercial developers to improve roads affected by their projects. The cost of those improvements can be deducted from the calculated impact fee.

Shrope also said that while the fees may not raise large sums of cash, the money can be used to obtain state and federal dollars for projects.

At a recent information-gathering session for Spokane Horizons, several residents said impact fees should be included in the city’s long-range plan. “The state has given us (authority to impose) impact fees. Use them,” wrote one of the participants.

Jim Craven is a land-use attorney who represents the Spokane Home Builders Association and the Association of Realtors. He argues the fees simply aren’t fair.

A home buyer who sells his home only to move a few blocks away to a new home would have to pay the added cost, Craven said. Meanwhile, a person from out of town who buys the older home wouldn’t.

“The inequity of such a system is obvious,” he said.

But Robert Mulvey doesn’t see it that way. The 17-year Indian Trail resident sold his first home in that area only to buy another a few blocks away. He says he doubts the added fee of about $1,500 would have deterred him.

“It wouldn’t have bothered me,” he said. “That wouldn’t hold anyone back from buying a new house.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MEETING The council meets tonight at 6:30 in City Hall.