Mar 20, 2024 Planning and Zoning Commission on 2024-03-20 5:00 PM (Capital Improvement Advisory Committee)
March 20, 2024 Planning and Zoning Commission
Full Transcript
>> Good afternoon and welcome to the City of Denton's Planning and Zoning Commission
meeting for Wednesday, March 20th, 2024.
We are convening as the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee, sorry, CIAC, the PNZ serves
as the CIAC.
And with the quorum present, we'll call us to order at 5.01 p.m.
We have one item on our agenda, and that is 1A, PZ24-040, receive a report, hold a discussion,
give staff direction regarding the updates to roadway impact fees.
Hello there.
>> Good evening.
I am Brett Bourgeois, the City Engineer here at the City of Denton, and we're here with
Pete Kelly from Kimley-Horne Associates to present an update of the roadway impact fees.
We have been to this body a couple of times a couple of years ago.
We've no substantial, no changes to the technical aspects of the report.
It's been, we took your recommendations previously to City Council.
City Council debated back and forth on collection rates, we wanted to give you an update as
to where the City Council fell in the collection rates and come back to this body to get your
recommendations to go back to City Council and move this process forward as much as we
can.
So I would like to introduce Mr. Pete Kelly, he'll be the one walking through the presentation
and answering any questions, and myself, any questions you guys may have.
>> Thank you.
>> Hi, Pete.
>> Good evening, commissioners, I have the chance to present to most of you before on
this project, and there's some new faces, and so hopefully we can get refreshed and
caught up on some of the basics of what impact fee is, and also just review for you the results
of the study and the collection rate options, like Brett said, that were discussed at council
and the recommendations that they have to consider moving forward, and if you have any
questions and want to stop me and clarify anything, I will do my best to provide an
answer.
To recap the role of the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee, it's threefold.
It's to advise and assist the City Council in adopting the land use assumptions, which
as we'll discuss in a minute is one of the components of the impact fee study.
Number two, to review the capital improvements plan and file written comments on that, and
also to file written comments on the, so just the study overall, which encompasses the land
use assumptions, capital improvements plan, and the impact fee calculation itself.
So the basics of an impact fee, they are a one-time fee that are assessed to new development,
so they're not assessed to existing residents unless said residence is building a new development.
They are not recurring fees to be paid annually or monthly over time.
They're governed by Chapter 395 of the Texas Local Government Code, so there are specific
requirements on how the program can be administered, which also requires an update to the study
at least every five years.
Why are impact fees implemented and used?
One is the main reason is to provide an additional funding tool for roadways that cities can
use to help as the impact and demand of new development hits the city network, and also
to help provide for the orderly growth of the community.
The five components of an impact fee study are, first, the service areas.
We need to establish which areas fees can be collected and spent in.
From there, we need to project out the land use assumptions and develop capital improvements
plan and also establish the service units for standardized unit of measure and calculate
the maximum fee in each service area.
So I'll spend just a slide kind of explaining what each of those components are and how
they're calculated.
So we established the service areas.
You can see here there's five service areas in the city of Denton, roughly bounded by
major roadways for the most part, and that's A, B, C, D, and E. As you can see here, these
are essentially the same as the service areas that were established in the initial roadway
impact fee study in 2016 with some minor changes to bring in the annexations that have occurred
since then.
Also, you can see on the map the non-annexation areas.
We use the info from the comprehensive plan mainly to project out growth for the next
10 years, and that's put up on the slide here in four basic categories.
We look at residential, which includes single and multi-family, and we look at basic, which
includes industrial and agricultural service, which includes office and institutional and
retail, which includes essentially everything else, shopping, dining, and entertainment.
As you can see, we have a larger projection of residential growth in service area A and
C are really our higher growth areas, with A being heavier towards residential and C
being heavier towards commercial, specifically industrial, but we still have some growth
in really throughout the city as well.
The next component of impact fees is the capital improvements plan.
The capital improvements plan is where we identify the infrastructure needed to serve
that growth that we just projected, and that has to be, per chapter 395, has to be based
on an adopted plan.
That is based off of the mobility plan, which was recently updated in 2022.
This is an example CIP capital improvements plan map for roadway impact fees.
We have one of these for each of the service areas, this is just showing service area B
as an example, to show that we have several different project types that are included
on the roadway impact fee CIP.
Those include, in the red dashed line, those are new roads on the mobility plan that have
not yet been built, and then the blue roads that are roads that need to be widened to
their full capacity.
Just for reference, we have in black the other roads that are not impact fee eligible.
The final component is calculating the maximum fee, and we really just put all those previous
components together.
We look at the growth over the next 10 years.
I'm gonna move down to the bottom of the slide here.
Just the basic formula is we look at the growth, which is on the bottom of that equation, and
then we divide that by the cost of the infrastructure needed over the next 10 years.
I should say we take out the cost to fix existing deficiencies and also the cost to widen roads
past the 10 year horizon, so we're really just focused on the 10 year horizon that's
governed by chapter 395.
After you do that, there's a credit calculation step that occurs to look at the impact of
ad valorem taxes after those developments come in, so we did that step as well.
That is detailed out in table nine of the impact fee study, but it essentially comes
down to this bottom line of the maximum fee.
This is what you're seeing here is the maximum fee per vehicle mile, and so to understand
what this means for different land uses, you would actually have to go to our table 10
in this study, which shows how many vehicle miles are generated per development unit in
a PNP car, but per vehicle mile, it ranges from $3,700 about to $5,200 per vehicle mile
for the maximum fee.
This table, we put this table together to show what that means for five different land
use types and also compare that to the 2016 study and five different collection rates,
so I'll walk through one step at a time.
First, I'll start with the land uses that we picked to help put this into perspective
of if I'm a developer coming in and I have to figure out what my impact fee is going
to be.
For a single family home, the 2016 maximum fee would actually be $9,800 for a single
family home, about 20% of that is the collection rate that's been adopted since then at $2,000
a home.
Moving to a 250 unit apartment complex, the percentage is actually half that for all the
non-residential, so that applies to shopping center, office building, and light industrial.
Light industrial rate was actually capped at the warehousing unit, the warehousing rate
in 2016, I should say all the industrial uses were capped at the warehousing rate.
Moving to the 2022 maximum fees, so if you move all the way over to the right of this
table, the right-hand column, that shows you the maximum fee for each of these land use
types.
So, for a single family home, the maximum fee on average throughout the city is $20,800
about, and for a 250 unit apartment complex it would be $2.8 million, so I won't cover
every dollar amount in this table, but the options that we showed council were 20%, 30%,
40%, and 50% of the maximum fee, and what you don't necessarily see in here is that
each of these columns also includes a discount for non-residential uses, so for the 20% column,
the non-residential uses are actually at 10%, 30 and 15, 40 and 20, if that makes sense,
so essentially what we're showing is the non-residential uses paying half the amount
per vehicle mile that the residential uses would be paying, so this just provides a comparison
of what all those uses would be, these different percentage rates.
One of the requests was to look at, well, how much can we actually build at each of
those collection rates, and so we are showing here 20% through 100%, this is just an example,
so this is just Service Area A as an example, this isn't the whole city, and Service Area
A, we calculated a cost of $203 million that is attributable to the 10-year growth, and
of that amount, this slide just shows how much you could actually build with impact
fees at the different collection rates, and I should point out that the 20% through the
60% includes the 50% discount for non-residential, but the 100% bar is 100% for all uses, that's
why there's kind of a bigger difference, bigger gap between 60 and 100, but as you
can see, the further you go down, the more you're able to actually put towards building
roadways to fill the need.
It was also requested that we provide some data of comparison cities just to see what
other cities are charging, and some of these cities share some commonality with Denton
in that they are college towns, others are simply just geographically close to Denton
and may not be that similar in other ways, so we have kind of a variety of comparison
cities here to show you, but essentially what we're looking at for single-family home collection
rates are a range from $1,280 per single-family home in Lubbock all the way up to $18,000
a home in the west side of Flower Mound, now I want to point out that that's a fast-growing
area of Flower Mound that doesn't have a lot of infrastructure yet, but if you compare
that to the east side of Flower Mound that is mostly built out, has infrastructure and
is not growing as fast, the fee is quite a bit lower, it's $3,000 a house, so just to
compare to the different collection rate options in Denton, currently $2,000 a house is third
from the lowest in this set of data and $12,000 a house gets you up to the higher end, so
these collection rate options kind of cover the spectrum, if you will, of these comparison
cities, and we also are showing what percentage of the max these cities are charging, some
are charging up to 100, some are charging a much lower percentage, there's also quite
a bit of variation in how large these cities are, how many service areas there are, and
when the studies were conducted.
So to recap the recommendation that Council discussed and put forth is they expressed
support for adopting 20% of the maximum fee for residential uses and 10% of the maximum
fee for non-residential uses with an annual meeting to determine what percentage increase
to go from there, there wasn't support for a predetermined percentage escalation each
year but there was support for some type of escalation each year.
And the schedule is we have our meeting today and then on April 2nd the public hearing will
be set for May 7th that the advertisement will go out April 5th and the main action
that this body needs to do is to file written comments for Council that can range on anything
from the study to the collection rate recommendations, so with that I'll turn it over to any questions
you have on the study or the assumptions or the collection rate options if anything didn't
make sense or we can clarify something for you.
Commissioner Smith.
Thank you Chair.
Can you go back then, 20 and 10, so can you go back to that table of comparison to other
cities for a quick second just to see if it's at 20 where that's going to basically weigh
up there comparatively.
Only quick question I had on this table, I think this would be a good one to keep up
for us to discuss around, why such a drastic difference between something like Lubbock which
is the lowest all the way to Flower Mound which is the highest and I know some of the
information you already gave gave answers to that right that Flower Mound West is growing
so fast.
Lubbock on the other hand, I don't know about Lubbock so maybe it is maybe it isn't but
speed of growth, lack of infrastructure and area it still seems like that's a massive
I mean it's a what is that a 1700% increase difference between the two of them.
There's got to be more variables than just demand and growth is the reason why it's so
much higher comparatively.
Yeah roadway cost is one of them and in Lubbock specifically they chose not to put all their
mobility plan essentially on the CIP they've limited their CIP quite significantly just
to targeted roadways and it was their first adoption and chose to wade in if you will
with a slightly smaller CIP and cost and also adopted 50% as opposed to 100% there.
The other variable besides demand and growth is the trip lengths and the trip rates that
are used and so in some of these studies the trip rates may be based on an older edition
of IT and some studies cities may strategically choose a shorter trip length so those are
the two kind of variables when we're looking at projecting growth and so there's a lot
of different things besides demand and growth.
So kind of what it seems like is the comparative for the collective fee is really there's variables
outside of this they even go into calculating that fee that makes it.
We can have a conversation around comparative nature because eventually what's going to
really be looked at is going to be what is the impact fee that's being leveraged against
the developer there and I don't think anybody who's looking at Denton is having comparison
between should I build in Denton or should I build in Lubbock I think that's not saying
that we're that much better or we're that much worse is more of like you're just not
having that conversation you're having like do I build in Denton or should I build in
Flower Mound right and so I get that but there's so many variables it sounds like from your
aspect that have really nothing to it's just more of like the calculations going into it
that the comparative analysis of it well thank you for it and I think is important and should
have some weight on it should have this overbearing weight of well we need to be in the same ballpark
and range as these other people because there's the way they're getting the way they're doing
their maths is different than we're doing a way that we're doing our maths essentially
is what I heard in accordance with chapter 395 yes sure it's all right okay Commissioner
Cole thank you chair you know you had this the Flower Mound West there but if you had
something called Denton West there is everything west of 35 that's in the city limits between
University and Robeson Ranch Road has no city services they're without lacking city services
there's everybody's on like me on a septic tank well water redneck internet you know
with the dish pointed at line of sight you know that's all you can do propane so that
calculation I mean might be different if you took that into consideration because there's
a vast area of the city that offers no services to anyone you know and another you know just
to just impact fees are one of the things you know I saw a comment on a Denton centric
Facebook page it's about Denton and they're asking why we can't you know land companies
that pay X and above now all right according to that we're we're in line and pretty doing
you know our impact fees are not out of whack but it is a calculation among many calculations
if a company is going to put down a corporate headquarters or a corporate campus or what
have you you know so just want to throw that in thank you thank you Jared sorry I moved
a little faster than I should have a few questions I think and then I'll go later for a couple
questions of staff the do you in doing the study did you look at what our split of impact
fees charged over the last several years between residential and non-residential uses with
the 50% discount do we help me understand is it a 90/10 split is a 50/50 split I'm
just trying to understand what the magnitude is there I know one point we did look at revenue
collected we don't have that table in this study out of so I don't have to top off top
my head I don't know if staff if you know kind of building permit wise what the split
is there so I don't have those those numbers off top my head and then to compute the maximum
fee did did we use the projected tax revenue method within 395 or the 50% method good question
we we did use the projected tax revenue method yeah and then for individual applications
right and development permits do let me describe the situation because the jargon won't make
much sense and I'll probably miss it up anyway when you have say a lot of housing in zone
A and a lot of commercial in zone C and then somebody comes in for a permit to build commercial
in zone B that's halfway in between the two right I believe it's referred to as trip
chaining within the document as far as the lesser impact in trip length and that sort
of thing based on location of the development yeah is that factored into these or is that
not a factor and how does that work out I think if I understand your question right
you may have someone drive from work to the gas station or maybe to school to pick up
the kids and then and then go home so we have three different uses right and so we have
three different trip lengths that we're essentially looking at and you may span across service
area A service area B in that case so in in the study there's what's called the the love
met table or the land use vehicle mile equivalency table where we where we show here's the trip
rate and here's a trip length and we multiply those together to get our vehicle miles per
development unit in there we take into account that the maximum size of a service area is
six miles by chapter 395 so the data we look at for example single-family home so a trip
to go home is nine point seven nine miles based off of the national household travel
survey but service area size is six miles so we limit that to six miles and then from
there we say there's actually I'm stepping away from the mic from there there's actually
two uses there so we cut it in half for the we call it an origin destination reduction
so we actually taken three mile trip length into account there and then multiply that
by the the trip length so so there's the multiple use and also the within service area trip
length factor take into account for that so so essentially the maximum trip length is
set at three miles because by statute we can't have an area that's larger than six and by
nature of how they're split up between service areas you could sort of say that there's some
trip chaining there but it's not a direct input to the calculation of the the trip length
right and the cost yes yeah okay and then lastly I know and I'm not sure how they landed
but I know at the time when this came before us Fort Worth was also considering roadway
impact fees and that sort of thing I think they split up their service areas differently
than we did could you describe kind of how that was it was some in the center and then
some around the outskirts and I guess my question is obviously we're not considering service
area boundaries now but there may be some future direction to future updates so does
that geometric arrangement versus our current geometric arrangement yield different fees
within different areas and encourage infill and that sort of thing yes so in the city
of Fort Worth most of the area inside of inside of the loop is now no fee service areas predominantly
what's going on there is the infrastructure is built out and most of the development not
all but most of the development is is infill development and so there's no there's nothing
in chapter 395 that says you have to change it to no fee service area but they chose we're
gonna make that a no fee service area but it but still show it as a service here in
our study it's just not going to be fee charged there and there were two additional service
areas in their last update that were added as no fee service areas as the infrastructure
is almost built out and growth is slowing down so that was that decision was made slowing
down in the core at least yes yeah one of them is outside the core that they chose to
designate as no fee okay most of them are in the core all right and I guess if staff
has an answer on sort of the split of the fee revenue between residential and non-residential
since this is we're considering a similar discount I guess or something else that would
help me and that's all Mr. Thacker thank you chair how are the how are these bond totals
assumed and where where did that calculation come from on this slide mm-hmm yeah so we
essentially the full length of the bar on this chart is the two hundred three million
dollars which is in table nine we essentially go through a few steps to calculate the the
cost attributable to ten year growth so the cost attributable to build our growth is much
higher or existing efficiencies would be higher so we take that and then we essentially we
did these revenue projections at 20% through 100% and subtracted out those numbers and
then subtracted out the the twelve point three million dollars which is part of the the credit
calculation which would be funded by ad valorem taxes and essentially it's just the delta
that's left after you subtract out those two things the revenue projections and the ad
form taxes okay so we're just saying the red bar we'd have to find some other way to some
other funding source to come up with probably that fair enough to build those roads okay
thank you mm-hmm who else okay I know the last time we we met on this I think everybody's
got the minutes in front of us we had said we wanted to move to 50% with a maximum allowable
fee of gradually increasing up to 80% I know that was our discussion back then obviously
that didn't sit well with council because they I assume you went with that information
to council and then they came back with 20% is that correct yeah there there've been a
couple work sessions with council since then there this this last time there is more of
a refined recommendation the previous time we didn't have a consensus commissioner cool
thank you chair so what is the majority of you on council in your opinion I mean it's
look says 20% so is I mean because that that's important for us knowing which direction the
majority of council wants to go they they agreed together to make this their recommendation
okay and 20 is kind of the wheelhouse so to speak yeah okay so if you look at this column
right here that's the 20% that's what and this includes ten ten percent for non-residential
so it'd be effective 100% increase for single family right because we're sitting at two
thousand right now right yeah just so it'd be maintaining the same percentage but with
2022 costs if you will right yeah of course that was how long ago that we were collecting
that were way but we're way behind so I guess what we're what you're looking for is further
opinion than our original discussion I'm trying to understand exactly what what you would
like further from us so that we can get everybody channel yeah I think what we're looking for
at this point is is another set of written responses to go back to council so we can
go forward with setting the public hearing date on April 2nd so I believe something to
similar to what you have with the meeting minutes and what your group consensus recommendations
is going forward it can be the same recommendation you had because we'll present that to council
and they'll take that under advisement but this is the the consensus we got from the
last time was a hundred percent consensus but it was a the majority 20% with the yearly
reevaluation of the fee rate right and I guess our commission looks a little bit I think
we've got two new peoples two different people than from our original consensus Commissioner
Smith thank you just to clarify apartment complexes is classified as residential use
here correct that's correct yes wanted to make sure Commissioner Perot thank you chair
so does staff have any recollection or information as far as where the 50 percent discount for
non-residential uses came from when this was originally adopted in 2016 time frame I'm
sorry I didn't hear the question is there any information about why the 50 percent discount
for non-residential uses was applied when when first passed in 2016 I do not have and
I can kind of speak to a little bit of the 20 I'm sorry if you know I was gonna say
I we don't I don't know off the top of my head I can go back and look at the notes the
meeting minutes when we pulled the meeting minutes from the 2016 adoption they actually
started the roadway impact fee in 2011 it wasn't adopted until 2016 so about five years
in negotiation and debate as to how to set the fee so we can go back and look over that
and see how they came to that decision but it was a lengthy process to get to where they
got to in 2016 I want to add one other piece as far as to the kind of going to that what
what you were here I'm sorry Scott McDonald director of development services so kind of
going back to what it is that that we're looking for out of this today is is similar to what
you had witnessed previously what you had done previously short of the fact that when
we were visiting with various stakeholders so working through I have a very good relationship
with the Home Builders Association they they of course had a great deal of pushback with
the 50% and what those economic impacts may be to our community and so we were looking
at this kind of where it is how we ended up with counsel that the 20% and 10% is that
it was an equitable means for us that we recognize this is not going to cover the costs of what
we need to do going forward but it is a step better than where we're at today ultimately
we need to do this because we're past that window and just looking to get you know again
that support and to move forward so we have something in place that we can at least start
recouping some of those dollars and that 20% that as far as some of the staff we were we
were comfortable with that and again kind of dealing with our outside stakeholders if
that helps.
Just to give my input here I think my opinion hasn't necessarily changed but I think that
as as a committee going forward and being able to suggest something that doesn't just
at least get thrown into the wind that we can find some sort of compromise within here
I think the idea of having a separation of service areas a lot like how Flower Mound
and Fort Worth have done that makes a lot of sense that A and C are our service areas
that have the most amount of growth coming I think that if we could get to something
that could be a recommendation for council to consider having different service areas
to be able to treat the impact fees differently that'd be great problem with that recommendation
is we're going to have to go back to the drawing board and so that's not it's not really on
the table it's not really feasible within there and so that could be a recommendation
I assume for our future five-year conversations so I think that's I think it's a good one
I think it's I think it's about as about as good as we're going to be able to to to be
able to make some sort of recommendation of there and saying I'm not gonna sit here and
say 20 and 10 and you know I'll agree with the annual evaluation determined percentage
increases but then I'd add on a audit didn't upon there and say every a five-year review
of the impact fees would be only the recommendation I would include is my idea and I think I mean
I think the issue with the twenty percent in my opinion is it's we're already behind
you know from what we've been collecting and everything's gone up and yeah it's a hundred
percent increase but you know what do we hear time and time again from everybody is infrastructure
infrastructure we're building all these new houses we don't have the roads we don't have
you know how many people stand in front of us and that's what their biggest complaint
is and I know it's difficult how do how do we get that infrastructure right how do we
do this this is one tool of many in our toolkit but I think it's one tool that right now we're
really not using to our advantage as a city I think I think you know 2016 is a long time
ago we've been collecting two thousand dollars it's just crazy for the growth that we've
seen and for what we need in this town for infrastructure I mean I just think we're way
behind and I do think it's it's just really low so I I mean our discussion back a year
ago is I mean just kind of still where I am though I guess I might could come down as
far as a recommendation a little bit on the fifty percent but I think twenty percent's
too low and again obviously City Council in the end is going to have the the the say in
the end but you're here for our input so that's that's what I'm giving Commissioner Smith
and then Scott you want to say something okay just throw in there I know Jordan also had
his his hand up too but going back to this conversation we had you know 15 months ago
at that time I kind of got a little bit overruled by the rest of the committee on it I had suggested
originally 20% with a transition to 50% and so I'll throw that recommendation back out
there since our original 50 to 80 kind of got kicked in the butt so I'll say butt on
public TV I don't care and I just wanted to answer Commissioner Smith's comments of earlier
and I think that there's a piece in this that there's great value and in the very comments
that you are making Madam Chair on this slide you'll also see an annual evaluation to determine
the percentage increases so we'll be going back to council so I think truly if we can
get this over the finish line so we can kind of take the next steps and even to evaluate
if we have other thoughts or ideas that go forward as far as what those service areas
look like and some other recommendations we can kind of work through that so I think it's
one step at a time and we shouldn't be looking at this because we're almost close to a decade
I look at this in a different way so maybe that first step again if we know where we
have concurrence and buy-in and then we can come back to this body within another year
and say okay hey what are some ideas going forward we can engage Pete to put him to work
on some other tasks but maybe even thinking of this differently we were just trying to
carry forward something that had expired and I think that this again is just one step in
the process and then we can probably be a little bit more progressive going forward.
Thank you.
Commissioner Villarreal.
Well with that in mind I'm still in favor of our prior suggestion but I could get to
the point where I'm in agreement with Vice Chair Smith's second proposal which is a recommendation
for 20 percent with the gradual increase to at least 50 percent I think we should at least
make our voice heard that we support a gradual increase in the future we're not in favor
of stagnation here and at the very least I would support that yeah.
Thank you.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you Chair yeah so I just want to echo Tim's comment on the service areas in the
future oddly this is probably my biggest request is that in the future when we come to impact
fee discussions we start calling what it is and that is I mean it's a fee as seen by the
developer it's a subsidy as seen by existing city taxpayers so I would prefer for us instead
of talking about a 20 to 50 percent fee that we talk about a 50 to 80 percent subsidy.
My recommendation I understand the desire to come to some terms council's going to do what
they want to do anyway I'm sitting here very close to what Commissioner Ellis is describing
that we have been behind we've been ignoring how much roadways cost for decades and we're
about to get into a couple decades where we're going to take on potentially over a billion
dollars in city debt to fix that right and every penny helps so so I'm going to stick
with the the prior recommendation of 50 to 80 percent I I would say potentially as one
suggestion that might get adopted if nobody knows why we're discounting non-residential
let's stop discounting it that will help a little bit the and then a couple other things
I I would like the written remarks to include the original direction from 2016 to use impact
fees to incentivize infill and then I would like I would be open anyway given the update
that we had from the comprehensive plan development goals last summer I recall that there were
almost zero applications for duplexes or triplexes or fourplexes and adus and since our comprehensive
plan describes a need for a variety of housing types I guess a question to legal would with
those land uses because they're called out in the land use table in our code be considered
different enough that we could set a a discount for those land uses independent of single
family detached homes okay well I would just give direction that if they could we would
apply a discount for those types of housing units that our comprehensive plan is asking
for more of and we haven't seen any of them this is a tool that we could use to to try
to spur that and see where the where the dividing line is when we start to see some more of
that development thank you thank you commissioner Cole thank you chair so when we talked about
this last I took the consensus position I yeah I was okay so where is council on this
because in the end that's where it's gonna be and if that's councils want then and that's
what it's gonna be tonight you know because like I said before you know we're in a competition
with every under like municipality I mean you can't compare the core of Fort Worth Texas
to the core of Denton Texas apples and oranges we are in a running competition for a lot
of things with a lot of other municipalities that are very similar to us and I don't want
us to be out of step you know I if that's where the consensus is you know I'm a pragmatic
consensus builder at that's where I'm okay with is right there and because that's kind
of where it's gonna we know what's gonna be so I think would be a little bit more progressive
I think with where we're going from 20 to 50 I mean they're saying they're doing an
annual evaluation to determine percentage increases but I can guarantee every time we
come together to do an annual evaluation we're gonna need more money like period end of story
so I mean I do I do like Tim's numbers of 20 20 percent to 50 percent but I do think
maybe we should consider just a little more because again you're gonna come back to the
same decision I think eventually go ahead Scott one other piece that may help to answer
and I've got staff looking to see if we can find something to to Commissioner Pruitt's
question on the 10% but I will sell you tell you that that's a very significant number
when you start talking about commercial collection because of the value of those projects so
another component to this there's two pieces that I want to make sure that I articulate
this doesn't fall deaf on council's ears the fact that they're dealing with a multitude
of fees and fee increases and will be coming back before council with water and wastewater
fee increases that I think are going to be quite significant I don't know how many people
are aware last night they raised fees on electric you know by 20% so we're we're talking about
one component within the entirety of this municipal complex they're balancing that with
the other fee increases that we're also carrying forward and one slide that you saw that that
fee increases to the right or wrong absolutely that's not that's not an impact fee that we're
talking about but but again it's they're looking at all of the fees that impact our residents
and our business owners and so within that that this is one piece of the pie where our
fees we've we've went to a to a you know a cost recovery model and development services
we are we are probably one of the highest in the metroplex at cost recovery on our fees
and when we look at we're going to do water wastewater our roadway impact fees our park
impact fees and and when we look at the totality of that we we have to balance that with what
it is that we are as an economic vehicle as well so that commercial piece of that that
discount is reflective of what it is that our professional staff is saying as it relates
to how that is going to impact our economic development to the future so when we look
about those taxable dollars at sales tax revenue that comes in all of these things are factors
into that so it's not a matter of discounting or subsidizing development in some ways it
might be subsidizing development for the benefit of the city long-term economically it it is
it is not in a vacuum that this is being looked at or being discounted so I can't give you
the hard numbers but I can give you kind of more of the narrative of what's occurring
beyond this one piece so I just want to make sure that I'm clear and and and that council
is looking in a in a in a very complete way they're not looking at this and and really
a vacuum or discounting what it is that you're providing it's just trying to answer the big
picture thank you when is this going to council again so we have it on we have it on the agenda
this presentation shows it as a consent agenda item but it's been moved to an individual
consideration to set the public hearing on April 2nd so I'll just be a resolution to
set the date for the public hearing and we're forecasting or projecting the date to be May
7th for the public hearing and propose adoption gotcha okay okay okay so I mean basically
what we need to do is as a group has come to a consensus to to be able to finish off
this meeting so that they know what to go talk about with council so I don't know that
we have a majority consensus at this point I know three spoke to the 20% to annual increase
of I don't know if you said annual I don't want to put words in your mouth but to a gradual
increase I believe gradual yeah yeah and and to Commissioner Thaggard's point just one
thing to consider is you know with every year that goes by and we try to get that 10% what
you know what is everything else costing as we're and and we're never like we're staying
behind you know and this tool it doesn't do anything effectively I mean I'm sorry but
you're collecting two thousand dollars it's not doing anything I mean okay it's doing
something you're collecting some money but literally it's not having an impact which
you know the development is having an impact but this fee is not having an impact certainly
not right now and we're at eight eight years now since it's been even talked about so I
mean if we're going to start low and recommend that low which it's hard for me to get on
board with at the moment but we've got to at least we've got to say that we're going
to do this every year and with every year that we're going to have an increase because
it's I mean it's crazy we're just never going to we're never going to reap the benefit of
what this should be and and yes we probably we not even probably we do need to look at
areas I mean that has and I don't know I don't know how it how it reads when we can look
at that do we have to wait the five years to look at that no you can update the study
any time okay just required at least I know it's just a lot of work and a lot of discussion
to do that but I think that's really important you can see by that comparative study of different
cities even though of course it's not all apples to apples but you can see when you
look at those numbers well yeah they're they're only collecting that because basically their
entire infrastructure is built out of course they don't have to do that and of course you
know they you can divide Flower Mound like that because yeah that other part of Flower
Mound they way collected their impact fees a whole long time ago on that that built outside
and then the new part is is in dire need of of build out because they can't finish it
doesn't have any infrastructure right now it's kind of like our 35w issue so anyway
it's just those are my thoughts for I know it it's difficult to jump from where we are
to that fifty percent number I get that and I get the pushback that I'm sure that if Scott's
talking to his builder meeting some I have no doubt that he's getting a tremendous pushback
from that.
So sure no Tim talked about a fifty percent a maximum fifty percent yes that's correct
which is what Commissioner Villarreal said and what Commissioner Cole has said go ahead
Commissioner Villarreal sorry I just want to clarify I'm more in line with what you're
saying chair I'm just I could see myself getting to 20 to 50 if that's the consensus it doesn't
sound like it is currently so I'm not really well I mean that's what I'm trying to do I'd
like to get to consensus because that's really what we're here to do and they've got to get
this presented over 50 day let's do it then I'm gonna go through that so I know Commissioner
Pruitt has stated that Commissioner Smith has just stated that Commissioner Perron I
know this is all new to you and I don't know if you have any thoughts to share with where
you know if you would like to be in agreement with just what we've had said or you are welcome
to weigh in if you would like it's just a touch yeah there you go thank you I think
that there's a lot of things to consider I definitely understand the need for the percentage
increase but also in the sense of equity what's the impact to our residents as well and so
keeping that I guess for the forefront for me just for consideration I think of the discussion
that I heard today I'm the most in favor of the proposal for the 20 percent to the gradual
50 percent increase but no this has been good to learn and good to listen to so but that's
where my thoughts are right now Commissioner Pruitt and then I will come back to this side
yeah just a question that may help I know I'm making broad generalizations I hate to
do this but in the interest of time I'm going to do it the way these impact fees are are
calculated I believe there's a different trip length assumption for different residential
uses and therefore the single-family home fee per family if you will would be higher
than that of a family that might be in a multi-family home that that might have a lower cost of living
is that an accurate statement I'm just trying to yeah because equity was mentioned it seems
to me like the residential component of these is already graduated from an equity lens and
I just want to understand if that's a reasonable view of the facts so the answer to the difference
between single-family and multi-family is yes multi-family has a lower trip rate per
unit it's a little more than half that of single-family so the fee per apartment unit
will be high lower now keep in mind that it's going to be the developer of the single-family
complex it's going to pay for 200 400 600 units at a time which will likely get passed
on into the rent of those who are living there but yes there's a difference okay thank you
yeah and I I appreciate all the comments I'm still at 50 to 80 I just I don't see how the
city gets fiscally ahead by subsidizing development that we know is fiscally negative so that
we can get more in the hole thank you thank you commissioner Thacker thank you chair I
just just for the record I if I think if we do not consider something like 50 to 80 then
I'm all we're doing is borrowing trouble because down the road the development is going to
come whether we like it or not so eventually what's going to happen is is that we've got
all of this development and we don't have the infrastructure to support it so then those
people end up back in our chambers complaining about it later or we have developers that
are getting it you know directly from their renters or whomever else so I just want everybody
to think about that again they're going to build anyway if we want to support it we can
support it if we don't want to support it we're going to hear it later just for the
record so you are at a 50 to 80 okay commissioner Villarreal you are you're doing 50 to 80 Tim
you've jumped commissioner Cole is that 20 okay so and commissioner Perjuan was at 20
so we've got a consensus to stay with our original recommendation obviously that's what
it is to council and in the end they're going to go forward with I assume with what it is
that they will go forward with council is almost as much divided as this body is in
terms of determining the rates and as Scott mentioned there's a lot of other factors are
considering with other impact fee at the same time and other impacts as well so we'll bring
your recommendation forward be written and we'll include in the presentation and let
them discuss it and decide what collection rate they'd like to go with yeah I know it's
a difficult it's difficult all the way around I think what makes it even more difficult
is when we get this far behind excuse me on on discussing it and and increasing it a long
time ago like we should have so that should be a note that that we cannot let this happen
again and to where we are eight years lapse and and all of that development that has happened
to end this is where you know this is where we get to Commissioner Smith I know we got
to get to work session for PNC another commission I serve on you guys should join sometime the
let's ultimately call it what it is we have that that bar graph of 203 million no matter
what the dollars for the impact is going to be passed on to the end user right if it's
impact fees associated with the development of a building it's gonna be the increase in
price or increase in rent it's gonna be passed on that way if it's about if it's debt that's
being used we're using debentures and bonds it's gonna be interest costs can be paid back
via either ad valorem taxes or to be paid back via revenue generated from the you know
from the city and then lastly it's gonna be paid for by ad valorem taxes so no matter
what it's gonna get paid so really I think the 50 to 80 whatever it is yes still in consensus
for that but I think my point that I'm trying to really make is that it's really about how
do we want the end user to be impacted by this and there is definitely an argument to
be made that 50 to 80 or higher impact could mean we we worsen or we make it harder for
renters home buyers those kinds of things moving forward and the residential side right
but ultimately they're gonna be paying for it no matter what so really impact fees should
be about how do we encourage or discourage development and so it's added that last piece
of we need to talk about zones in the future that's really where my mindset is coming from
is this is about encouraging this and discouraging development it's not about who's paying because
ultimately end user is gonna pay right no matter how you chop it up and in the end can
you with the recommendation discussed with council that we talked about looking at those
areas again in the future if that could be part of the recommendation we'll have that
in our written yeah we'll make sure council gets that recommendation yeah excellent okay
anything else for CIC okay and do you need anything else from us appreciate all the information
thank you very much I will go ahead and adjourn the CIC meeting at 558 p.m. take a short break
to grab dinner and then we'll come back for our work session PNC.