City staff briefed the Santaquin City Council on a proposal to switch to an annual, data-driven process for updating impact fees, master plans and rate studies, and to contract with Hansen Allen & Luce to set up data tables that would make future updates cheaper and more frequent.

The proposal was presented as a way to avoid large, infrequent impact-fee studies that can leave fees out of step with inflation and material project costs. "With these data tables, the cost to implement and update the data tables and the master plans is about what we paid 5 years ago," a city staff member said, describing the consultant’s approach. Consultant Chris Thompson and staff said the initial setup would be the highest-cost step, after which annual updates would be far less expensive.

Under the proposed approach, Hansen Allen & Luce would create and populate data tables that track variables used in the impact-fee analyses and master plans. Those tables would be refreshed each January using the previous "data year," and a shorter, lower-cost update would produce legally defensible impact-fee reports and master-plan tables. The firm and staff estimated initial costs of roughly $70,000–$75,000 to update each of the culinary (water) and pressurized irrigation (PI) master plans and impact-fee analyses; recurring annual updates thereafter were estimated at roughly $5,000–$12,000.

Staff said the expenditure can be paid from existing impact-fee accounts and that a public notice for a hearing on related budget amendments would go out on Friday. The staff member said the work would be presented as a professional services agreement at the next council meeting; no contract award was approved at Tuesday’s meeting.

Questions from council members focused on defensibility, cost controls and staffing. Staff said state law prohibits using impact-fee collections to pay for city staff time on impact-fee projects and that an outside professional is needed to provide the certification required by statute. Chris Thompson said the approach is intended to make fees more predictable year to year for developers while keeping them accurate: "If it goes up $500 or $600 or $700 every year, that's something that they can live with," he said.

Discussion-only: extent of council questions about buy vs. build, staff capacity and legal defensibility. Direction/assignment: staff will return with a professional services agreement and budget-amendment notice for a public hearing; staff indicated the initial work will use the 2024 data year to bring the city current. Formal action: none taken; council asked for details and will consider the contract at an upcoming meeting.

Background: consultants and the Home Builders Association have supported the general approach; Jody Hoffman (an impact-fee attorney referenced in the meeting) helped design the data-table method discussed. Staff characterized the system as tested over 12 years in other Utah municipalities and said it would reduce the cost of routine updates while improving accuracy and predictability for developers.