CV wants new-home impact fee

Struggling with rising enrollment, a Spokane Valley school district proposed a $1,410 new-home fee Monday to relieve its growing pains.

The fee, which over the next several years Central Valley School District estimated could be applied to 6,000 or more homes, is needed to offset the expected $32 million cost of two new grade schools expected to be built by autumn 2009, plus several million dollars in remodeling costs.

“It lightens the load on existing homes and increases the load a little on new homes,” said David Jackman, Central Valley’s auxiliary services director. The fees “fund a small cost of existing facilities. We would be very lucky to get 5 percent of our facility costs.”

State law says the schools can receive the new-home money only if the local governments within the district agree to collect it. Monday night, the school district made its case for impact fees to the governments of Liberty Lake, Spokane Valley and Spokane County. Each government entity will now decide if it wants to collect the money. None of the entities has scheduled further action on the district’s request.

It was the first time Central Valley gathered all three local governments together for a meeting and the first time Liberty Lake or Spokane Valley, both less than five years old, had been asked to assess a fee on new construction to help schools. But it wasn’t Spokane County’s first brush with impact fees, and Commissioner Mark Richard wasn’t sold on the school district’s proposal.

In the mid-1990s, Spokane County collected $300 to $500 per building lot for parks in the Mead and Spokane Valley areas. Mead School District collected $750 per lot to offset the growth-related costs of portable classrooms. Responding to developer complaints, county commissioners dropped the park fee. The school district dropped its fee, saying the collection hassles were-n’t worth the money.

Richard told the Central Valley School Board that impact fees weren’t fair.

“One of the concerns I’ve had about impact fees is it does not adequately address the impact on the schools,” Rich-ard said. “The fact is quite often you have folks buying larger homes in existing neighborhoods who pay nothing. And you have a husband and wife who has moved into a new (planned unit development) and wind up paying impact fees for schools. … Everyone who buys a new home uses a new road. Not everyone who buys a new home has a kid in school.”

Earlier in the day, Richard’s sentiments were echoed by the Spokane Home Builders Association, the commissioner’s former employer, which wrote a letter of opposition to Central Valley earlier in the month. Home Builders’ Association Executive Officer Joel White said his group might consider putting its weight behind passing local school bonds if impact fees were scrapped. The association believes school bonds paid by the entire community are usually the best way to support schools, White said.

Other officials questioned the likelihood of collecting the fee from 6,000 homes in the near future. Jackman said he didn’t expect all the money would be collected in less than 10 years.

However, new home construction has been brisk in the greater Spokane Valley area. Spokane Valley issued 367 permits for new homes in 2005, slightly up from a year before. Liberty Lake issued permits for 113 homes. Countywide, Spokane County issued 1,471 home permits, including hundreds in the Spokane Valley area.

School officials argue that schools, built to serve existing neighborhoods and some modest growth, are nearing capacity as home construction booms. Both of Central Valley’s high schools, less than four years old, are within a hundred students of capacity. And the Greenacres and Liberty Lake areas, where hundreds of homes have cropped up in the past few years and thousands more are planned, is short a middle school and an elementary school.

Liberty Lake Mayor Steve Peterson, whose rapidly growing community is in need of new schools, said he thought his council would support impact fees. Good schools attract good businesses, said Peterson, who has seen a wealth of light industry migrate to Liberty Lake in recent years.

But impact fees help more than schools, said Spokane Valley City Councilman Dick Denenny. Roads, parks and public safety are all eligible for impact fee money.

“It is opening up a conversation that this community has not had, and it is much broader than just the schools,” Denenny said. “I don’t see how you could take up fees for schools in isolation.”