No impact, after all
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he term "impact fee" is government-speak for "they pay so you don't have to."
Real estate developers detest impact fees, as do people buying new homes. They add thousands to the construction and, therefore, purchase price of new construction.
Still, we would argue, they are good public policy. Sewers, streets, water systems, etc., have to be upgraded to handle additional development, and it's only fair that the businesses and people who create the additional demand for those services pay a greater share of the initial costs.
All that said, Weber County is going to be missing some much-needed impact fees -- to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars -- over the next three months. The reason? The fact is, the county surveyor/recorder's office doesn't have its act together.
The county only recently adopted an ordinance instituting impact fees, after years of discussing whether or not to do it. It was to have taken effect Sept. 1. Now the county commission has OKd a three-month grace period from paying the impact fee for all developers -- because County Surveyor/Recorder Ernest Rowley, even though he saw this looming ahead, still managed to allow a backlog of subdivision requests to pile up in his office.
Rowley blames illness and even a death for the cause of the backlog. He may be right, but good managers figure out work-arounds to achieve results.
The deficiencies of Rowley's office will mean an estimated $270,000 in impact fees to be collected from about 90 building permit applications will not be collected by the county.
To his credit, Rowley did recommend to the commissioners that developers not be forced to suffer for his office's inefficiency. It may be recognizing the obvious, but it was still the right thing to do. The commissioners did the right thing by approving the grace period, even though their hands were tied.
We hope Rowley gets his office quickly back in order so that after November Weber County can capture those much-needed impact fees.
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