Kanarraville board moves to raise impact fee, pursue ordinance to fund proposed water tank

KANARRAVILLE, Feb. 27 — The Kanarraville Town Board on Thursday reviewed its Impact Fee Facilities Plan and directed staff to prepare an ordinance to raise the town's water impact fee to the maximum recommended amount and list a new storage tank as a candidate project.

The decision came after more than two hours of discussion about current impact-fee balances, how impact fees may be spent, projected water demand and timing for a replacement or new storage tank. Board members heard staff detail consultant recommendations and financing scenarios and asked for clearer calculations before finalizing any rate increases.

Board member (Speaker 2), who presented the plan, told the board that the impact-fee accounting “is what Joe fills out and files with the state” and that the town must “account for all the impact fees that are collected in that year, what we did with them or what we will do with them.” Speaker 2 said the town can retain impact fees for up to six years for an identified project and described the recommendation to list a proposed 400,000-gallon concrete tank in the plan and to raise the impact fee to the recommended maximum ($57.53, as shown in the plan). “If you want to continue with that cement tank… then basically we already know what we need to do to raise the rates to pay for it,” Speaker 2 said.

Why it matters: Impact fees are restricted to capital work that serves new growth, and the Board must show a planned use to retain collected fees rather than refunding them after six years. The board’s decision to list the tank preserves the option to keep collecting impact fees for the project while it decides whether to pursue construction, a bond or a loan.

Key details and fiscal context

- Current connections: staff said the town has 239 water connections, seven of which are not turned on; that yields 232 active connections for billing calculations. - Impact-fee balance: staff reported the impact-fee accounting line as “$5.11” in the plan document (as presented to the board). Staff noted earlier receipts of $10,500 with roughly $10,000 applied to the Culinary Water Master Plan. - Capacity and proposals: Speakers discussed the town’s existing storage (reported as about 350,000 gallons) and the consultant’s recommendation for 400,000 gallons to meet a projected build‑out scenario. Board members questioned the assumptions behind the projected number of buildable lots used in the consultant’s demand estimate. - Estimated costs: the plan’s opinion of probable cost listed a $700,000 line item to “install the concrete tank and apparatus,” with additional grading/excavation costs (example figures discussed included about $200,000), producing multi‑hundred‑thousand‑dollar totals and, when other project items were included, overall totals approaching the $1.5 million range shown in the plan materials. - Rate recommendations: the consultant material discussed a recommended raw-water base rate near $48 and showed scenarios that would place the town’s rate at higher levels (participants noted a state benchmark of roughly $78 for certain loan/grant program eligibility). The board discussed several rate-and-tier options and requested clearer spreadsheets showing how those numbers were calculated.

Constraints on impact-fee spending

Speakers repeatedly emphasized that impact fees may only be used for improvements attributable to new growth, not for general repairs to existing lines. As Speaker 2 summarized: impact fees “have to be for new growth. You can't use it to, like, fix current” infrastructure unless the expenditure is tied to growth-related upsizing.

Board direction and next steps

Board members voiced a preference for retaining the tank as a listed project and raising the impact fee to the maximum recommended level so that fees may be held for up to six years while the town refines budgeting and build timing. At one point Speaker 1 said, “I would say we raise it to the max, and we put it towards the water tank,” and multiple members indicated agreement. The meeting record shows the chair asking staff to prepare an ordinance reflecting that direction.

Staff and the board also agreed to pursue clearer, line‑by‑line spreadsheets from the consultant so the board can see how the plan’s totals and the recommended rate levels were derived. Speaker 2 offered to arrange a call with the consultant (Sunrise) to walk through the Excel workbook and the formulas.

The meeting concluded without a final vote on changes to water rates; the board asked staff to return revised calculations for the upcoming budget cycle and to draft the ordinance to raise the impact fee to the consultant’s maximum so the item can be considered formally at a later meeting.

Ending: The board instructed staff to prepare an ordinance to raise the impact fee and to bring corrected/calculated rate scenarios back for the next budget meeting. The session later ended by a routine motion to adjourn that carried by voice vote.