Minutes 12-13-2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

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16 2. As proposed by Northwood Ravin, developer of Carraway Village in Chapel Hill. 3. Northwood Ravin proposal modified by staff to include an outer time limit on issuance of a Certificate of Compliance (aka, Certificate of Occupancy). BACKGROUND: On November 15 the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) adopted updated school impact fees which will become effective January 1, 2017 (see Attachment 4) with incremental increases each year through 2021. This represented a starting point of 43% of the "maximum supportable impact fee" (MSIF) with increases of 7.5 percentage points each year for four years. At the time of adoption, the BOCC directed staff to return with language that would allow for projects that have reached certain project development milestones prior to January 1, 2017 to be "grandfathered" for the 2016 fee levels but to have an outer time limit for the grandfathering. This provision was requested primarily by multi-family developers because the impact fee for multi-family units with 3+ bedrooms will increase on January 1, 2017 by $6,847 per unit in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district (CHCCS) and by $8,596 per unit in the Orange County Schools district (OCS). Developers are concerned that projects that have already gone through a lengthy project approval process but are not yet ready to begin construction will be adversely impacted by these increases because financial analyses of these projects took into account the existing impact fee levels ($1,286 in CHCCS and $1,743 in OCS). This topic was discussed at the December 5, 2016 BOCC meeting where concerns were expressed by development interests that the construction timeline proposed by staff did not allow for a long enough construction timeframe. Northwood Ravin, the developer of Carraway Village in Chapel Hill, proposed additional language that would pertain to projects with at least 100 dwelling units. This language is included in the resolution in Attachment 2. Adoption of this resolution would allow an open-ended construction timeframe, provided the 2016 impact fee amount is paid prior to June 30, 2019. Staff notes that prior updates to school impact fees, which were first adopted in 1993 and have been updated several times, did not provide for extensive grandfathering of projects. In the past, projects that obtained a building permit prior to the impact fee effective date were allowed to pay the prior fees, even if the certificate of occupancy was issued in the subsequent year(s), but additional consideration was not made for projects that had only approved special use permits or zoning compliance permits. Town of Hillsborough staff has stated a preference for drawing the "grandfather line" at "projects that have active permits and are constructing either buildings or infrastructure on site should be able to pay the current fees. Projects that do not yet have construction authorization despite having conditional or special use permits should pay the fees in place at the time construction is authorized" (see Attachment 6 which includes the reasons for this preference). Because of the open-ended nature of the Northwood Ravin proposal, staff has produced a third option (Attachment 3) which includes the language proposed by Northwood Ravin but also requires that a Certificate of Compliance be issued prior to December 31, 2020. The BOCC could also choose to adopt a different construction outer-limit date for projects containing 100 or more dwelling units.