ARIZONA DAILY STAR: Weds., Jan. 16, 2008
EDITORIAL: 'Impact fees' are part of growth vocabulary
Ask 100 people about how, or if, Tucson should grow and you'll get 100 different responses. But listening to anyone in a position to do anything about growth — government official, environmental advocate, homebuilder — can be an exercise in frustration because of the specialized vocabulary.
We're trying to help break down these linguistic barriers by explaining terms and concepts common to the growth debate.
The first on our list is impact fees. These fees, governed by state statute and charged by local governments to homebuilders, are intended to pay for infrastructure costs created by new development. Impact fees are a mechanism for cities, towns and counties to make development pay for itself. Fees for roads and parks are common.
The premise is this: A developer wants to build 2,000 homes on land with access to a main road. The local jurisdiction will charge impact fees, which vary according to the government, to help pay for changes to that road required by the extra traffic from the new development. Because members of 2,000 new households will be using the main road, maybe it will need an extra lane, or a turn lane or a wider intersection with a signal.
The logic is this: Those improvements wouldn't be necessary if the new homes hadn't been built. The fees don't pay for the road you drive on to get to your house, they pay to improve the arterial road you take to get to your neighborhood.
The same goes for impact fees for parks: Residents want and need park space. Some governments charge a separate fee to pay for new regional parks or to upgrade existing parks when a new development goes in.
But no matter what the impact fee ultimately pays for, one fact remains: the cost of impact fees is always passed on to the home buyer.