Minutes 10-04-2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

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10 costs of a single family home. He said in multi-family dwellings, the owners, not the renters, will incur these fees. Commissioner Price said but the property owner may charge renters more because of the increased fees. Craig Benedict said they do not get into those areas at all. Commissioner Dorosin said it is likely that a lot less three-bedroom apartments will be built. Commissioner Rich said if more people are coming here with children, then more schools will need to be built. She said taxes will need to be raised, and impact fees are helping to build these new schools. Commissioner Burroughs agreed. Commissioner Price said she was concerned about the percentage increase of the fees, not so much about the actual impact fee. Commissioner Jacobs asked if he is correct in assuming that they cannot differentiate between the different categories of housing, as far as the impact fee is raised. Craig Benedict said a chosen fee should be consistent throughout all categories. John Roberts said the legal requirement is that there should be rough proportionality between the fee that is set, and what that fee is offsetting. He said there could be a flat fee if so desired, which may be seen as more equitable. He said to keep legal challenges to a minimum proportionalities should be consistent across the categories. Commissioner Jacobs asked if it would be defensible for the flat fee to benefit those with the most affordable units, and would otherwise have the highest increase. John Roberts said it would depend on the calculations, and Orange County and only two other counties actually use an impact fee. He said there is no state law on this topic. He said the more complicated the fee system gets, the more difficult it will be to defend. He said if there is public policy reasoning behind the system, it may be more defensible. Commissioner Jacobs suggested getting past the bond, etc., and if the BOCC wanted to adjust the impact fee schedule in a defensible way, to make this all easier on affordable housing residents, he thinks the Board would support this. He is in favor of impact fees helping to offset the cost of schools, but he also sees the complication of how high the impact fee is going to be for a manufactured housing unit that has 2 bedrooms, compared to a stick built house that has high cost and two bedrooms. Craig Benedict said there are different ways to invoke impact fees. He said a flat fee is easy to implement, but the proportionality test is weak, and out of sync. He said in the past the County did have a flat fee, but they have trended toward using the best available data and where the student generation rates match. Commissioner Jacobs said some of them do not want to affect the affordability of units, and it may be good to have a couple of options with examples and how this would impact a particular unit-proportional fee vs. a flat fee. Craig Benedict said that a flat fee analysis would take months, and costs thousands of dollars. Commissioner Jacobs said this is the best data currently available and what the Board should use to invoke impact fees or make any changes. Commissioner Dorosin said he is not sure whether the impact fee structure is the best place to address affordability issues. He said he would be interested in pursuing other tools or incentives to address the affordability issue. Commissioner Jacobs said the County does not receive new school construction funds from the state, but is receiving mandates to reduce class sizes; and this may be the best way to address new resident impact on the schools. He renewed his petition from the spring, for other incentives that may be available.