ORD-2008-114 - Educational Facilities Impact Fee Ordinance

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effective January 1, 2013. In fiscal year 2013-14, the County should expect to update the technical study using current data at that time. Commissioner Jacobs asked why the two school systems had to move in tandem if the construction costs were so different. Geof Gledhill said that the impact fees are in the nature of regulatory exactions and are measured by the courts on a different standard than legislative matters. Commissioner Hemminger asked about the breakeven point. Donna Coffey said that she has not done a breakeven analysis. Laura Blackmon said that staff did an analysis on what it would take to pay the debt , service. Commissioner Yuhasz asked if a schedule of increases could be set and before implementing increases there would be a report on the effect of the last increase and a determination on whether another increase is necessary or could be delayed. Geof Gledhill said that, if the Board did this, he would recommend only implementing the current year's impact and have staff review the data for the upcoming year as opposed to implementing the impact fee and adjusting it. Commissioner Yuhasz asked clarifying questions about .the student generation rates, which were answered by staff. He asked for reports on how the data are collected. PUBLIC COMMENT: James Carnahan was from The Village Project. He made reference to an email letter sent to the County Commissioners last week about the fees. The Village Project would like the County to provide some kind of relief for housing called accessory dwellings, which are size- limited dwellings. The original request that there be some relief was based on a case of a friend of his who built a 750-square foot dwelling for a parent. The structure costs $80,000 and the builder was subject to the $4,400 impact fee, which was 5.5% of the cost of the structure. The accessory dwellings fulfill an important need for affordable housing for senior citizens. It is unlikely that there would be a school impact from these dwellings. He suggested adding "accessory dwellings 600 square feet or less" to the multi-family designation. Omar Zinn is a builder and a local developer. He said that the drastic increase directly affects him. He said that it is a buyer's market and house sales are down. He asked the County Commissioners to delay any increase in impact fees. He understands that it has been seven years since the last increase, but now is not the time.. He would like to see everyone giving towards affordable housing. Letter from Robert Dowling: To members of the County Commission, I'm sorry I won't be attending your meeting this evening, but I wanted to ask a couple of questions about the proposed increases in impact fees. As most of you know, I manage Orange Community Housing and Land Trust. We provide homeownership opportunities to low-income households -primarily in Chapel Hill and Carrboro where the elected boards ask us to implement their inclusionary housing policies. In addition to our inclusionary housing work, we develop our own housing. For example we are planning to build two affordable homes in Carrboro early in the new year. They will sell for about $125,000.