Council hears impact-fee report and annual drinking-water update; city reports $16 million in impact-fee balances

City staff presented two informational reports at the Nov. 3 Post Falls City Council meeting: the annual fiscal report on impact fees (covering 2023–2024) and the Drinking Water Division’s annual operations review.

On impact fees, staff explained the statutory requirement to report collections and expenditures and the 8-year FIFO rule for spending. The presenter summarized a five-year history of collections and expenditures, and said the city currently has approximately $16,000,000 in city-related impact-fee balances. Staff said eligible uses include parks, public safety, multimodal and transportation projects, and noted some impact-fee dollars collected on behalf of Kootenai County Fire are forwarded to that agency.

Council asked whether the city has enough qualifying projects to spend the fees within the statutory time window; staff said the city has been tracking projects and will update the impact-fee project list as part of the transportation master plan update. Robbie Quinn confirmed some current parks projects will use impact fees.

Craig Bornpool, Utilities Manager, then reviewed Water Division operations: the division operates 10 active wells, four reservoirs and 128 miles of water line; he reported the Water Division pumped 2,350,000,000 gallons in the water year. Bornpool described seasonal operations (fall chlorination at about 0.2 parts per million for ~30 days), backup generators at wells, annual backflow-assembly testing, and recent operational incidents: Well 8 lost a motor near peak irrigation in July but was returned to service within about a week after staff sourced a replacement locally. Staff reiterated conservation guidance and said the system has redundancy to maintain service during outages.

Staff indicated updates to impact-fee projects and the transportation master plan will be scheduled for future workshops with the council and Planning & Zoning.