Impact fee would help pay for another pricey project

Port Washington officials are poised to create an impact fee to ensure future residents will pay their fair share of an upgrade to the city’s public works facility on Moore Road.

The General Government and Finance Committee last month agreed to move the concept to the Common Council for a public hearing, saying it’s only fair that portions of the building needed by future residents should be paid for by them.

A study presented to the Board of Public Works this summer revealed the municipal garage is in need of significant repairs, and a facilities assessment showed they could cost more than $15 million.

A needs assessment recommended the city add onto the existing building, demolish the salt sand structure and cold storage pole barn and cordon off the drop-off site used by the public to separate it from the building.

A study by Trilogy Consulting showed impact fees can be used to pay about one-third, or $4.6 million, of the cost of the improvements.

The proposed impact fee would total $2,877 for a single-family home. 

When added to the city’s existing fees for sewer connections, park development and impact fees for the public safety building, the total would be $12,335 per single-family home.

The current impact fee for a single-family house is $9,458.

For a duplex, the impact fee for the city garage would be $2,110 per unit. For apartment buildings, the cost would be $1,918 per two-bedroom unit and $1,151 per studio or one-bedroom apartment.

Nonresidential buildings would also be charged the impact fee, but on a  44-cent-per-square-foot basis.

In a survey of 14 area communities, Port’s current impact fees rank 10th. If adopted, the new fees would bring the city into sixth place.

According to the comparison, Grafton charges a total of $8,090 in impact fees for a single-family house, of which $1,326 is for the Department of Public Works. 

Cedarburg charges a total of $10,361 and does not have a DPW impact fee.

While Port needs to consider the impact of the fees on affordable housing, the study notes that it won’t have a significant effect on it because most of these homes are older buildings, not new homes.

“The new housing that’s going up tends to be a little out of the range of people making the median income,” Christy DeMaster of Trilogy Consulting told the committee.

“It’s not hurting current homeowners,” Ald. Jonathan Pleitner, a member of the committee, said. “It’s only on new development.”

Committee members noted that the impact fees aren’t generally paid by homeowners directly but by the developers of subdivisions.