The Sedona City Council did a little mandated housekeeping in terms of required fees for development.
On Tuesday, Feb. 12, council held a public hearing as part of the city update to its Developmental Impact Fees. According to a city report, these are one-time charges applied to new development, so the new growth will pay its fair share of infrastructure improvements needed to provide municipal services and to ensure existing residents are not unduly burdened to pay for improvements and services needed to accommodate new development.
The state requires that these fees be updated every five years. This item will appear before council three more times before the fees become effective in September.
In her staff report, Assistant City Manager Karen Osburn said the categories under consideration for assessment of these funds are streets, police and parks. While the current DIF schedule also assesses fees for drainage and general government, she said these categories are proposed to be removed in this update.
Although drainage is a permitted category, the city currently has drainage issues and only an extremely small portion of the costs of improvements could reasonably be attributable to new growth. As a result, new development should not be required to contribute financially to solving the existing drainage issues.
A report by city consultant Tischler-Bise breaks down the projected needs and costs for streets, police, and parks over the next decade to keep up with demand of a growing population in which the DIF could be used. These include:
- Parks and Recreation
Land: Four acres at a cost of $604,000
Improvements: $770,00
Facilities: 1,400 square feet of facilities for $174,000
- Police
Vehicles: Two for $110,000
Facilities: 1,000 square feet of facilities for $245,000
Communications equipment: $135,000
- Streets
Arterial street improvements: $2.3 million
Other street improvements: $150,000
“This is one mechanism that allows you to have development pay for itself,” Tischler-Bise’s Ben Griffin said in regard to the DIF. “You need infrastructure capacity to continue growing. This is one way to ensure that you have that capacity. By having these components in place it allows you to say, ‘These are the components we think we need as a community to continue growing.’”
