By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
Edgewood is taking another look at impact fees with a new administration.
Impact fees are imposed on builders to help cover the cost of infrastructure improvements, in this case for roads and the town's wastewater treatment plant. A previous study was shot down late last year because several councilors said the numbers didn't jell.
The old numbers, developed by BBC Research & Consulting of Colorado, took both projected annexation and projected growth into account, estimating more than 300 percent growth in five years. That contrasts with the Mid-Region Council of Governments numbers of 11 percent growth over the same period.
Rather than a number-crunching error, the issue may have been politically driven, according to Karen Mahalick, the town's development manager.
"The administration at the time had a very wide-reaching annexation concept," Mahalick explained.
That administration changed after the election in March when Robert Stearley replaced Howard Calkins as mayor and John Abrams replaced Chuck Ring as a councilor.
Now, rather than extending the town's borders, the current policy is one of infill, Mahalick said. Infill is a solution for the "checkerboard" pattern of annexed and unincorporated areas of the town, which can create a problem for town services such as road maintenance or policing. In dealing with the town's somewhat haphazard borders, the administration has yet to establish which areas are infill, Mahalick said.
A town impact fee committee, which met to discuss the issue Monday night, also considered the effects of what appears to be an economic slowdown, as shown by construction that has gone on in the past six months.
Based on the available information, the impact fee committee made a preliminary projection of nearly 40 percent growth, which some felt was a conservative number.
"I'd rather err on the side of low when it comes to what we can spend over the next five years," Doyce Wilhite said.
The committee did make a few estimates of what kind of funding might be realized by the fees. For example, Lone Pine Ranch, a proposed development near Wal-Mart, may have 600 homes tied onto the sewer line.
With impact fees of around $4,000 per home, a 600-home development could mean an additional $240,000 for the town to spend on its wastewater treatment plant.
"It beats the heck out of a sharp stick in the eye," Wilhite said.
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