North Ogden council adopts higher culinary water impact fee, directs staff to seek business offsets and new transportation study

The North Ogden City Council on July 8 adopted Ordinance 2025-18, raising the city’s culinary water impact fee for new construction and directing staff to return with policies to offset fees for prospective businesses. Council members also authorized staff to issue a request for proposals for a new transportation impact-fee study and to evaluate discounts for traffic that uses state (UDOT) roads.

City Manager John Call told the council the single-family home culinary water fee recommended in the consultant update is lower than the study’s original proposal for this year and that the new schedule would take effect Oct. 15 because state rules require a 90‑day delay after adoption. “These fees are governed by the state, and they set the rules that we have to follow by,” Call said.

Call said the new single-family culinary water fee proposed for this year is $6,273.70, down from an earlier draft of $7,384.71 — a reduction of $1,111.01 — and that the current fee in place for roughly two decades is about $3,312. He told council members impact fees may be used only for capital projects that serve new growth, not for operations or maintenance.

Why it matters: Council members framed the votes as part of a broader effort to balance funding for infrastructure with the city’s ability to attract commercial development and broaden the tax base. Several council members warned that high impact fees…