Putnam County schedules second hearing on proposed impact fees after consultant outlines costs, exemptions for hookups

Putnam County commissioners on Tuesday scheduled a second public hearing for June 10 to consider adopting new impact fees that would apply to water and wastewater and four other service areas after a consultant presented a study of “the cost of growth.”

The fees are designed to pay for one-time capital capacity additions, not maintenance, the county’s consultant said. Negan Kemp of Benish summarized legal constraints, sample per-unit calculations and policy options, and said the study produced technically defensible maximum rates the commission may adopt or reduce.

Kemp said, "Impact fees are one-time capital charges to new development. They cover the cost of new capital facilities." She told commissioners the fees must be based on local, recent data, that there is a minimum 90-day notice requirement when fees are adopted or increased, and that recent state law changes limit how quickly fees can be raised.

The consultant’s presentation gave illustrative figures for single-family homes and other land uses. Examples discussed in the meeting included a transportation component of roughly $4,900–$5,000 per single-family dwelling in the study’s scenario and a combined set of fees (including utilities) near the range cited in the slides: roughly $16,000 for a typical single-family build in the full model. County staff said the county’s current fee schedule already shows a $2,500 fee for water hookups and an $8,000 fee for sewer hookups.

"We already have those fees," Public Works representative Bobo Grimes said. "You guys happen to waive it . . . $2,500 hooked to our water system today, and it's $8,000 hooked to our sewer system . . . that's whatever we're gonna call it."

Commissioners and members of the public asked how the proposed impact fees would affect property owners who are connecting existing houses to newly built mains. County staff and the consultant said hookups for existing residents who are being encouraged to abandon septic systems as part of grant-funded programs have been waived where grant terms prohibit charging the resident; by contrast, new construction or later hookups after a grant closes would generally be charged the connection/impact fee at the time the permit is pulled or at certificate of occupancy, depending on the county’s policy.

Kemp noted state-level constraints discussed in the presentation: the 2006 Impact Fee Act’s standards, a 2021 law that phases increases and generally limits fee increases to 50% and no more than once every four years, and a pending bill that—if enacted—would further tighten use of the “extraordinary circumstances” exception and require unanimous governing-body approval for that exception. Kemp also cited a 12-month study/adoption requirement when both a city and county collect certain transportation fees and the need to use data no older than four years for fee studies.

Commissioners pressed several policy choices: whether to adopt fees for all five service areas now or phase in some (for example, start with water and wastewater), whether specific land uses (commercial, residential, churches, nonprofits) should receive discounts or buydowns, and how any buydown would be funded. The consultant said the law requires proportionality — land uses within a service area should be treated consistently — but allowed that the county can use other revenue (for example, sales tax or development authority funds) to buy down or subsidize fees for targeted land uses if the county documents the public purpose and commits the alternative revenue.

On incentives and commercial development, the chamber representative said an incentive program separate from the fee schedule could use fee buydowns among other tools to attract targeted industries. Public commenter Benjamin Woodward urged caution about broad discounts: "If we take the calculations that your consultants came up with that represent the actual cost of the growth, and we discount those, whatever amount we discount it, we're putting it back on the backs of the taxpayers," he said.

Commissioners noted a statutory exception that allows the county to reduce or waive fees for qualified affordable workforce housing without the requirement to backfill the loss with another revenue source; the consultant described criteria tied to area median income and longer affordability commitments triggering larger discounts.

The meeting closed with a motion to schedule the second reading and adoption hearing; the motion was seconded and approved by voice vote. The commission set the second reading for June 10 at 05:05 as recorded in the meeting.

Next steps: the county can adopt any combination of the technically defensible rates shown in the study, reduce or tier fees within the legal limits described by the consultant, or pair fee discounts with other revenue sources to achieve targeted economic-development or housing goals. The consultant and county staff said the study results must be adopted within roughly a year of the study and that revenues collected must be used for capital capacity projects or returned per statutory time limits if not used.