Mayor recommends city not implement impact fees
MADISON – Proposed growth impact fees in Madison seems to be dead for the moment. Madison Mayor Paul Finley told city council members Monday night his office is recommending the city not move forward on implementing the fees at this time.
“With the COVID situation that we have, and with our continued efforts to grow retail and commercial businesses, an impact fee is not something we will look to do,” he said.
Before the coronavirus outbreak forced temporary closures throughout the state, the city was in the middle of considering an impact fee on new residential homes to help offset the rising costs of managing city-wide growth. It was hoped the fees would supply additional revenue to the city for services and infrastructure.
Under the proposal, single-family homes would be charged a $10,896 impact fee while multi-family units would be charged $6,087 per unit. The problem was that by law, commercial and retail businesses could not be excluded, meaning all new growth would be impacted.
“While implementing this would possibly slow down the residential growth it also meant we had to do it for commercial and retail, which was a huge inhibitor for us and something we were not willing to do,” Finley said. “The planning department had also voiced their opinion against it, saying it would hurt potential commercial growth in the city.”
The proposed impact fees came from a study the city commissioned last year for nearly $100,000. “We basically had three options,” Finley explained. “First option was to implement the impact fee proposal as defined by the study (which was considered in February).”
He said the second option would implement a modified impact fee for only Parks & Recreation and the Madison Public Library. “That meant we could implement an impact fee of $2,100 for single family homes and $1,400 for a multi-family unit, and there would be no fees on commercial or retail growth. However, it only would give us money for recreation and the library. “
The third option would be to implement a modified fee for just the western growth area of the city. “That was shot down fairly quickly,” Finley said. “That was not looked upon as something favorable for us to do.”
Finley said that while his office is not recommending the city council take any action to implement an impact fee system, he is open to talking about it in the future and reexamining the possibility of some kind of fee structure. Right now, though, he says the city is doing simply fine.
“We have a new school board president and a new superintendent that we met with last week. Both have expressed their great appreciation for the fact that we now have a property tax increase in place,” Finley said. “They are building the new elementary school and will soon start on the new middle school. We will work together on the infrastructure that is needed for those schools. We still have the ability to take care of our schools.”
He said the city’s growth plan that was implemented in 2016 has been a great tool for managing growth within the city.
“We have worked with any new development that has been approved and have managed any substantial developments with agreements that slows the growth down,” Finley said.
