CC - Agendas - City Council - REGULAR - 11/4/2008

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Prescott City Council { Regular Voting Meeting — October 28, 2008 Page 18 Jim Lawrence, 345 High Chaparral Loop, said that in 1995 he was a member of the original citizens committee that recommended impact fees for either increasing those already in place or new ones. He agrees that there may be other ways to do this, but in terms of what an impact fee, it is not trying to manage growth, it is not a tax. It is a very simple thing. When a new development comes in, as a water provider they must provide them water. At that stage they would go out, drill a well, put a pump into the well, then look at the customers they were going to service, the 50 homes. Those 50 homes would be charged a one-time fee to provide the water. It is not a maintenance situation; it is the original drilling of the well or running the pipes. If they took a look at any one of those homes and say they are not going to charge them their fair share of that cost, and ask their neighbors who already have water to pay a portion of that, that is not fair and that is { what they are doing if they do not charge the new users. ti George Seaman, 1830 Idylwild Hill, said that he has no comment about approving an impact fee or not, but he does hear two different discussions taking place. He hears one about residential impact fees and another about commercial. He is wondering if it would help them to consider them as two separate issues and vote on them separately. Gary Hudder, 422 Arizona Avenue, said that he wanted to correct the record on a few things. The process over the last few weeks has turned into "bash the developers" or at least there are some feeling that way. The developers are not the rich, irresponsible thieves trying to steal from the pockets of the community. They are business leaders; they provide jobs and employee payroll taxes. The money they generate from their work moves around and around in the community, paying for other services. If the goal is to try and get into the pockets of the greedy developers, they don't pay it—it is a fee that is passed through to the customer. He said that when they began the process a few weeks ago, they understood that their charge was to present alternatives, but when they started digging into the numbers they realized they are not economists and found things that did not make sense to them. The nature of them inquiring was not to question the name and reputation of Economists.com or City staff, it was simply that they were trying to put their arms around it. He said that they are not anti-impact fees. There are two in the crowd today whose businesses gain greatly from the City spending money on construction. He said that they would like to propose that beyond this particular event, that a blue ribbon panel or something be considered to look at this process. Mayor Wilson said that it has been equal opportunity bashing from his standpoint. He is not bashing the contractors, as he sits on the Council with one. He has heard the argument that they are raising the fees to stop growth, and that is not true. They have hired Economists.com and a lawyer