Chatham County Impact Fees

The Chatham County Board of Commissioners is currently considering changes to the county’s impact fee structure.  There will be a public input session at their meeting on Monday September 21, 2009.  Now is the time to let them know what you think about impact fees.

Impact fees are assessed on all new residential construction to help pay for new school construction.  The reasoning is that new construction brings new families into the county, which requires new schools to be built.  Unfortunately current county residents that move within the county or newcomers without children also help fund the cost of future schools.  Also, since impact fees raise the value of new homes, they’ll help raise the value, and therefore the taxes, of all homes.

The current fees are $1,100 for multi-family residences and $3,500 for single-family residences.  It doesn’t matter if that single-family residence is a trailer or a million dollar mansion the fee is the same.  A recent study recommended raising these fees drastically and also looked at the option to assess the fee based on the number of bedrooms for single-family homes to make the fee more equitable.  Legally, this is the only option available.  It would take additional legislation to allow fees to be assessed according to the value of the home.

Press release:  http://www.chathamnc.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=10563

Study: http://www.chathamnc.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=9787

Although impact fees have become popular in recent years they are not the only method of dealing with growth related infrastructure needs, such as schools.  One of the biggest problems with impact fees, as with all planning regulations, is that they significantly raise the costs of new homes.  This is especially true of lower priced homes and leads to a decrease in the number of such affordable homes built. 

The county currently reimburses the impact fee for certain affordable housing programs.   The county attorney has been instructed to look into ways to legally make more exemptions for the fees.  While this would help some people, it would also shift even more of the burden onto others.  Also, while the reimbursements can be tracked in the budget, it would be more difficult to track the impact of the exemptions.

The county Commissioners were very proud of the fact that they were breaking new ground when they created one of the first Sustainable Communities Departments in the country.  In recognition of how unique the Director’s position would be they bypassed the usual county hiring procedure and hired a recruiting agency to find proper candidates.  With all that investment and focus on the groundbreaking nature of this department and the commissioners’ vision for the future hopefully we’ll see some true innovation.  Resorting to the tired old method of raising impact fees and then cobbling together some system of exemptions and reimbursements to mitigate some of the damage hardly seems innovative. 

Hopefully we can find some innovative ways to cut the costs of new schools so additional impact fees won’t be necessary.