CC - Minutes - City Council - 9/19/2006

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Prescott City Council Study Session—September 19,2006 Page 11 Mayor Simmons supported an increase in Police and Fire and leave the others alone. Councilman Lamerson said he didn't like impact fees at all and the City should get rid of them; they were contradictive to the City's ability to do what necessary; they want new growth to pay for itself but they put pressure on existing infrastructure and gave as an example, Wal-Mart on Iron Springs Road, which was new growth but they didn't pay any impact fees, yet the City was looking at spending$17 to$18 million to fix a piece of infrastructure (street) that would bring customers; people living out of the Prescott limits didn't pay impact fees but they still had an impact on the city. Councilwoman Suttles remarked the City wanted new growth and impact fees helped pay for that growth, so the City needed to be careful and not price themselves out of the market; a 601%increase for police and 214% increase for fire was high but the City had been behind and police and fire were very low to begin with. Councilman Luzius asked if the proposed amounts were justified and Mr.Woodfill replied they were justified by the report and it was only for residential growth,not commercial growth. kir Councilman Luzius advocated going to full maximum on everything for a total fee of$6,015. Councilman Blair wanted to increase the Library impact fee 25%increase police,fire and public building to the maximum amount, and leave parks, recreation and streets where they currently were. Mayor Simmons didn't agree with his math and discussion went back and forth between them. Councilman Bell asked Economic Development Director Jane Bristol if interested businesses ask what Prescott's impact fees were and Ms. Bristol replied yes, along with what sales and property taxes were, because that was part of their consideration in locating here; Prescott Valley put a two-year moratorium on business and commercial impact fees; Prescott had never charged business and commercial impact fees; fire calls were generated by commercial businesses but residential customers paid all the impact fees. Mr.Woodfill clarified half of the fire calls were from businesses but those costs were not passed on to residential property owners. \r.