I understand what they are trying to do (suggesting the "tiered" system), but I don't see how it makes sense. How do you set the borders? What do you do when growth reaches the outskirts? Do you move the borders farther out? In-fill projects cause increased traffic, too, and they cause increased traffic where there is already a lot of traffic. For example, Mall Avenue needs to be expanded. Should a developer putting up a hotel or commerical center or a new restaurant have to pay less impact fees because it is infill when they are attracting more traffic to an already overwhelmed corridor?
Does a hotel that generates $150K in sales tax really pay its share of a $5M stretch of road widening (as a hypothetical, say the Hampton Inn and the overloaded Exit 62)? Would an $8M hotel really not locate in Fayetteville because of $200K in impact fees? Especially a national chain that is used to paying impact fees all over the country?
There already is a tiered system in place. Office/retail (which will generate more traffic) will have a higher impact fee than a warehouse (generating less traffic). The home impact fee is based on averages of how many daily vehicle trips originate from a home. These are averages, so a one-bedroom house (and who is building a one-bedroom house, really) and a five-bedroom house are given equal weight in the formulas. I think it is something like 4.6 trips per day for an average household. That seems about right for work, school and a trip to the store or out to dinner.
I understand the developers' position, but from researching the subject I couldn't find studies showing impact fees had stifled growth (in cities already enjoying rapid growth, where impact fees are usually used as an alternative funding method).
The independent studies I read concluded improved infrastructure attracts growth, it doesn't hinder it, and also increases the supply of buildable land. Florida has had impact fees for the longest of anyone (more than 20 years) and five of the top 10 American midsized cities in terms of job growth are in Florida in towns with much, much higher impact fees than proposed in Fayetteville. Buyers pay as much as $17K for a house and developers as much as $9-$10K per 1000 SF of retail space.
The biggest impact is going to be lower land prices. Developers end up offering lower prices for raw land to offset the cost of impact fees. I just can't see how some impact fees are going to drive development out of the largest city in NWA. Either way, those road projects need funding somehow. The city can't keep going deeper into debt. There is a case to be made against impact fees, but I don't think it is the breathless, "we're going to kill Fayetteville" hyperbole going around now.
This is a pretty good study on the subject from The Brookings Institution.
"A conservative interpretation would at least claim that no discernable adverse economic impacts from impact fees could be found. A liberal interpretation of these model results would argue that the imposition of impact fees typically results in positive effects on local employment, at least in Florida during the 1990s."
http://www.brook.edu/es/urban/publications...nimpactfees.pdf