The other day city council decided unanimously to not increase the impact fees that the city charges when new buildings are built.
Some members of council expressed their opinion that raising the cost of a piece of land in the city causes people to build outside of the city limits. We then essentially lose the property tax revenue even as those new county residents come into the city and use our facilities.
I can’t take a side on the issue, I simply don’t know enough about it.
The Times wrote an article about the vote and included a quote from the head of our water utility:
“We are OK with the 12-month delay,” Balliew said.
One of the driving forces behind the proposal to increase impact fees is the need to do a $43 million expansion of the Jonathan Rogers Water Treatment Plant over the next five years. Balliew said the utility will seek state money for the project from various sources including Proposition 6, which was passed by the voters last November and set aside $2 billion of “rainy-day funds” for water and sewer projects around the state.
Another double whammy?
State funds are available yet they wanted to roughly double our current impact fees.
I mentioned the situation to a few citizens and their responses were remarkably quick and similar. In essence they said “Sure, that way they get an increase in local fees and can get state money to pay for the expansion too. You don’t think the fee will be reduced once the project is paid for, do you?”
We deserve better
Brutus
Posted by Brutus 
elpasospeak 
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