City staff told the Parks, Natural Resources, and Cultural Affairs Advisory Board on June 2 that Fayetteville is preparing a park impact-fee update that would replace an older parkland fee-in-lieu system dating to the 1980s. The study follows state statute governing impact fees in Arkansas and is intended to produce defensible, updated fees tied to both land acquisition and the construction cost of park facilities.

Ted, the parks project manager, said the current parkland dedication approach often results in land donations located in floodplain or other low-value parcels and that the existing dollar amounts are low relative to current land costs. “As the city grows denser, developments have got smaller, lands gotten more expensive,” he said, explaining why developers increasingly choose fees that produce parcels city staff considers less useful for recreation.

Staff explained two principal changes under the impact-fee approach: 1) the new fee formula can include both land value and the capital cost to construct park facilities (for example, courts, fields or restrooms) and 2) the statutory framework ties fees to the areas they are intended to serve (the board discussed maintaining a quadrant structure). Staff estimated that, under an impact-fee model, fees in some examples could be roughly four times the current fee; they used the Van Ash example to illustrate that a fee that now appears as roughly $300,000 under the older system could be closer to $1.2 million under a fully calculated impact-fee model depending on land values and facility components.

Staff said they expect to refine the draft and bring a more detailed presentation to the advisory board in July. Consultants contracted in late 2023 prepared the draft using land- and facility-cost data; staff said the city must ensure the numbers are defensible because the methodology and fees are subject to legal scrutiny under the state statute. The board asked whether impact-fee collections would still be quadrant-based; staff responded that the statute constrains fees to the areas that benefit from projects and that a citywide fee could be treated like a tax rather than an impact fee.

Staff also discussed several operational impacts: the new statute-driven program would (a) increase available funds for land acquisition and capital park improvements, (b) allow staff more negotiating leverage with larger developments for land acquisition in strategic locations, and (c) continue to limit fee proceeds to capital (not routine maintenance) projects. Staff said funds collected under the new structure would be subject to statutory timelines for use (staff noted an allowance period discussed at the meeting of seven years under the proposed structure).