Here’s Pagosa Fire Protection District chief Robert Bertram speaking to the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners and explaining more about his district’s plan to begin collecting impact fees on new construction in Archuleta County, possibly as soon as early February, as the result of changes to Colorado’s impact fee law made last spring.
“Right now, [District funding] is predominantly property-tax based. Sometimes, we raise the mill-levy to get more money, then it’s always kind of ratcheting down. We’re losing money with that.
“So we’re looking at other ways to diversify ourselves.
“One of the things [SB24-194] did give us is the ability to go for a sales tax, if we wanted to, and the other one is to impose impact fees. Impact fees, we could impose them directly as a fire district. And the requirements for that is, first of all, we have to do a nexus study, which we did complete, which gives us the fees that we can impose as impact fees. And then we have to give 60 days notice, which was the letter we provided to you guys and the Town…”
I suspect relatively few people in Archuleta County have strong feelings, one way or another, about impact fees per se, since such fees would be paid only by new construction, and most of us living here already have our homes and places of business.
But I have a bit of history with this form of taxation.
The state of Colorado doesn’t call them “impact taxes” even though, in this writer’s view, they are in reality nothing more than another form of taxation applied to a select group of taxpayers. But if Colorado called them “taxes”, then their imposition would require voter approval. By calling them “fees”, the state government permits local governments to impose them, and set their amounts, without any voter okay.
We started publishing the Pagosa Daily Post in late 2004, and one of the first controversies we found ourselves covering was a conflict around the imposition of impact fees. The Town and County had jointly funded a 50-page report — the “nexus study” — written by Denver-based Economic and Planning Systems, analyzing certain long-range infrastructure expansions and upgrades that might be caused by new residential and commercial development. The report then calculated what those future improvements would cost, and how much of those costs could legally be likely collected from new development without getting into messy litigation.
We will be discussing, later, the fact that this study was 50 pages long, because that has a bearing on the current proposal from the Fire District.
You can download that 2006 nexus study here.
The 2006 nexus study urged the Town and County to implement the exact same impact fees, at the same time. If only one local government imposed impact fees, it was suggested, that would tend to drive future development into the jurisdiction that didn’t impose the fees.
The Town of Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County are developing a joint impact fee program that would be applied to new development in both the Town and County. The joint effort is a preferred solution, as it will prevent competitive entitlement processes that could erode funding for public infrastructure. As part of the process of developing the fee program, the two jurisdictions considered a range of fee programs including roadways, public facilities, parks, trails, water storage, fire protection, water storage, and school land.
Impact fees cannot be use to fund salaries, or ongoing operations. They can be used only for “future” capital projects caused by a growing population. The 2006 nexus report specifically states:
- Fees are formally collected to mitigate impacts from growth and cannot be used to address existing deficiencies.
After looking at the amounts that the consultants calculated, the Archuleta BOCC voted against imposing impact fees, believing perhaps that the Town would follow suit and also reject the idea. This didn’t happen; instead, the Town Council chose to impose the fees unilaterally, to be collected only within the Town limits, and to be kept in a separate bank account and used only as allowed by law.
About a decade later, the Town had collected a sizable amount of money to be used for roads. But instead of using the money as it was apparently intended — to build new roads resulting from population growth — the Town Council found it convenient to use the money for downtown road repairs in a neighbor that had seen zero new construction.
Naturally, I found it necessary to complain to the Town Council that I thought they were misusing the impact fees, but apparently, the Town Attorney had assured them it was perfectly okay to use the revenues for street repairs.
Why did Economic and Planning Systems want both local governments to impose the same fees?
Here in Pagosa, we have basically two types of business districts — “Historical Downtown” and “1970s Suburban”. And we have four types of residential districts: “Historical Downtown”, “1970s Suburban”, “Modern Rural”, and “Western Appalachia”.
A large number of current planning studies have concluded that America’s “Suburban Experiment” — single-family homes on quarter-acre to one-acre lots located at pedestrian-unfriendly, automobile-based distances from schools, offices, stores, and services — has been an economic, social, and environmental mistake.
The “Experiment” seemed successful at first, because the roads were still new, the schools were still new, the homes were still new, the infrastructure was still new…
But 75 years later, it has become clear to many analysts that the urban style of living — people living close together, within walking distance of everything — produces a more prosperous community over the long run. The “Suburban Experiment” meanwhile, tends to drain a community’s bank accounts, and then, its credit card limits.
In 2006, Economic and Planning Systems didn’t want the Town of Pagosa Springs to impose thousands of dollars of additional fees on new downtown homes and commercial buildings… without the County’s equal participation… and thereby encourage development to happen outside the urban area, where the financial burden on maintenance and services is ultimately much higher.
Finally, in 2019, the Town came to its senses and repealed its impact fees.
So we’re now faced with the issue once again. Should our Fire District impose impact fees on new development within its service area, as an additional source of long-range revenues?
Exactly how much money does the District really need?
And how much should “growth” pay for its impacts?
Read Part Three, on Monday…