Georgetown council hears consultant briefing on proposed development impact fees

Georgetown City Council received an overview of proposed development impact fees from a consultant during a regular council meeting. The consultant, Ben, described how the one-time fees would be calculated, what capital costs they could fund and the proposed next steps for stakeholder outreach and ordinance adoption.

The consultant said impact fees are “one-time payments, generally collected at the time of the building permit, to fund that new development’s proportionate share of capital costs,” and explained that fees can fund new capital items — for example, police vehicles, portions of water and wastewater capacity and municipal facility expansions — but cannot be used for operations, maintenance or replacement.

The presentation laid out three general fee methodologies — cost recovery, incremental expansion and plan-based — and explained which approach the study used for each service. Most non-utility components (fire, police, apparatus and equipment) use an incremental methodology tied to maintaining the existing level of service; the municipal facilities component (the proposed city hall expansion) is treated as a plan-based allocation. For utilities, the consultant proposed fees tied to average-day gallons for water and wastewater and noted separate wastewater treatment service-area schedules where only Treatment…