CC - Agendas - City Council - STUDY SESSION - 3/16/2010

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Agenda Item: Approval of Ordinance No. 4721-1018 superseding Ordinance No. 4665-0908 during the legislative moratorium or further legislative actions regarding the imposition of water and sewer development fees, and declaring an emergency A A table with explanatory comments is also attached indicating the current and rollback fee amounts. Note that in the case of the 5/8" x 3/4" water meter, the rollback water resource development fee amount ($4,944.71) will actually be higher than the amount set by Ordinance No. 4665-0908 ($4,594.00). The fee for this size of meter was adjusted down during the during the impact fee setting process on the basis of relative capacities indicated by American Water Works Association standards. Raising the fees for the larger meters enabled a redistribution and reduction of that for the 5/8" x 3/4" size. Ordinance No. 4665-0908 made certain other changes to the City Code not in conflict with the provisions of HB 2008. New Ordinance No. 4721-1018 preserves the effectiveness of these other changes. Budget As of March 3, 2010, twenty-three (23) permits were issued and charged the impact fees implemented by Ordinance No. 4665-0908. The fees for each of these permits have been recalculated per the prior schedule, and as mentioned above the permittee will be refunded the difference. The total amount of fees to be refunded upon the suspension of said ordinance, as of March 3, 2010, is $70,651.92. During this same time period, 61 commercial and 189 residential remodeling permits were issued. Many of these permits involved some type of plumbing fixture additions which would have required the applicants to pay additional sewer buy-in fees if the current (impact fee) ordinance had not been in effect. However, for those projects which did not require replacement of an existing water meter with a larger one, no additional sewer impact fees were collected. As a matter of good faith and reliance upon the fee structure in effect and applied at the time of permit issuance, staff is not recommending that any action be taken to collect such additional buy-in fees retroactively. Since the two-year impact fees moratorium will be in effect through June 29, 2011, the issuance of each City building permit during this period which creates new demand on the water and/or wastewater systems of the City can be viewed as having a financial impact. Generally speaking, the City will be prevented from recovering the full cost of serving the new demand. This may in turn necessitate changes to the water and wastewater capital improvement programs which will be addressed during the FY 11 budget cycle presently underway. Attachments - Ordinance No. 4721-1018 - Table of current and rollback fees Recommended Action: Move to adopt Ordinance No. 4721-1018 with the emergency clause. 2 _� t