Franklin reports steady development in first half of 2025; impact fees, multifamily lead activity

Catherine, a city staff member presenting Franklin’s quarterly development activity report, told the Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Aug. 26 that permitting and construction valuation for the first six months of 2025 remained strong and largely in line with recent years. "So far, we've issued 577 building permits, 2,725 trade permits and 201 fire permits," she said, summarizing calendar-year activity.

The report covered January through June 30, 2025, and also closed out fiscal year 2025 (which runs July 1–June 30). The city recorded roughly $528 million in construction value in the first six months — about $151 million residential and $376 million nonresidential — and staff said that fiscal-year construction valuation finished at about $884.5 million, a 2.6% increase over fiscal 2024.

Impact fees collected at midyear were concentrated in roads and sewer, the presentation showed: road impact fees totaled about $3.7 million at the six-month mark, sewer fees roughly $2.5 million, water about $865,000 and facilities tax about $1.1 million. For fiscal 2025 as a whole, staff reported approximately $5.7 million in road impact fees, $3.9 million in sewer, $1.2 million in water and about $2.0 million in facilities tax.

Catherine emphasized that impact fees are sensitive to the type of development permitted in a given year, noting large swings when multifamily or large commercial projects are approved. "Impact fees are not the best way to evaluate how development is going because it is so dependent upon the type of development that's getting permitted at that time," she said.

Housing activity through June included 156 single-family permits, eight townhome units and 211 multifamily units; staff said the multifamily figure reflected permits for an active-adult community in West Haven. For fiscal 2025 overall the city permitted 313 residential dwelling units, 71 townhomes and 247 multifamily units; about 222,000 square feet of commercial space were added during the fiscal year.

Staff also described new additions to the quarterly report: separate tracking of fire-suppression permits (a permitting split introduced in 2024) and a quarterly update on actions taken in response to a development-customer survey. On survey follow-up, Catherine said staff and the Development Services Advisory Commission are testing short, anonymous customer-satisfaction surveys (one 1–5 star question plus an open comment field) and have formed a development-process focus group to evaluate permit workflows and accessibility.

Board members asked for additional comparisons and modeling: Alderman Barnhill asked staff to overlay revenue under the new impact-fee methodology onto fiscal 2025 numbers to see differences, and Alderman Caesar sought clarification that the midyear charts compare the same January–June periods across years. Catherine confirmed the comparators and agreed to provide the overlay requested by Barnhill.

The presentation closed with a brief update on development maps to improve public access to real-time project information and an offer for quarterly follow-up to the Board.

The report was informational; no formal board action was recorded in the transcript.