Agenda - 09-16-2008 - 6d - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

p~ SCHOOL IMPACT FEES: Owwoe CoutJrv SCHOOLS Orange County, North Carolina Procedures for the earmarking and expenditure of fee revenues are typically mandated by the State enabling act, as are procedures to ensure that the fees are expended expeditiously or refunded. All of these requirements are intended to ensure that developments benefit from the fees they are required to pay. Thus, an adequate showing of benefit must address procedural as well as substantive issues. Demonstrating Proportionalitu. T'he requirement that exactions be proportional to the impacts of development was clearly stated by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dolan case (although the relevance of that decision to impact fees has been debated) and is logically necessary to establish a proper nexus. Proportionality is established through the procedures used to identify development-related facility costs, and in the methods used to calculate impact fees for various types of facilities and categories of development. The demand for facilities is measured in terms of relevant and measurable attributes of development. For example, the need for school improvements is measured by the number of public school-age children generated by development. ' METHODOLOGIES AND CREDITS Any one of several legitimate methods may be used to calculate impact fees. The choice of a particular method depends primarily on the service characteristics and planning requirements for the facility type being addressed. Each method has advantages and disadvantages in a particular situation, and to some extent can be interchangeable, because each allocates facility costs in proportion to the needs created by development. Reduced to its simplest terms, the process of calculating impact fees involves two main steps: (1) determining the cost of development-related capital improvements and (2) allocating those costs equitably to various types of development. In practice, though, the calculation of impact fees can become quite complicated because of the many variables involved in defining the relationship between development and the need for facilities. The following paragraphs discuss three basic methods for calculating impact fees and how those methods can be applied. Plan-Based Fee Calculation. The plan-based method allocates costs for a specified set of improvements to a specified amount of development. 'The improvements are identified by a facility plan and development is identified by a land use plan. In this method, the total cost of relevant facilities is divided by total demand to calculate a cost per unit of demand. Then, the cost per unit of demand is multiplied by the amount of demand per unit of development (e.g. housing units or square feet of building area) in each category to arrive at a cost per specific unit of development (e.g., single family detached unit). Cost Recovery Fee Calculation. The rationale for the cost recovery approach is that new development is paying for its share of the useful life and remaining capacity of facilities already Ti~chler~ise 6 Plsc~, [e'os~mieS~.PlSnnfng Cm~:u~inis.