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Pasco planning commission reviews emergency adoption of school district capital facilities plan; multifamily impact fee reduced
Summary
Planning commissioners reviewed an emergency comprehensive-plan amendment to adopt the Pasco School District capital facilities plan. Counsel said completed elementary and high-school projects reduced the student-generation basis, eliminating a single-family impact fee and cutting the multifamily fee substantially; commissioners scheduled a public hearing for Dec. 18.
Planning Commission members on Thursday reviewed an emergency comprehensive-plan amendment to adopt the Pasco School District’s updated capital facilities plan into the city’s comprehensive plan. No formal vote was taken; staff said the commission will hold a public hearing on the item Dec. 18 before forwarding a recommendation to the City Council.
The district adopted the updated capital facilities plan in March, staff said, and city council later adopted changes to the city’s impact-fee schedule. Outside legal counsel for the school district, Denise Diffar of Pacifica Law Group, told commissioners the revised fee calculations remove projects that were completed at the elementary and high-school levels and now focus on a planned middle school. “In this updated plan, the elementary school projects and the high school projects are now complete, and so they are removed from the impact fee calculation,” Diffar said, adding the district’s new planning is based on a middle-school project that lowers the student-generation rate used to set fees.
Staff and counsel said that change drove the fee differences commissioners asked about: under the recently adopted city ordinance referenced in the record, single-family dwelling impact fees were eliminated and the multifamily fee fell — the presentation cited a prior multifamily fee of roughly $4,525 per unit that was adjusted down to approximately $2,595 per unit. Counsel said the district’s enrollment and pipeline analysis informed that shift.
Commissioners asked whether the new fee structure would help or hurt developers given the city’s changing zoning and the pipeline of larger multifamily projects; counsel and staff said reduced fees lower upfront development costs under the city’s adopted fee schedule but noted the district’s calculations considered the development pipeline.
Because the commission treated this as a workshop item, it took no final action. Staff said both the school district item and a separate land-use “fix” for the RS 20 zone will be noticed for a Planning Commission public hearing on Dec. 18 and then proceed to the City Council for decision in January.
