Report urges fee plan for developers

The Las Vegas City Council has accepted an advisory committee report that recommends the implementation of impact fees on developers.

However, even if the plan goes forward, it probably won't be until sometime next year before it is determined how much the fees would be and when they would be implemented, city officials said.

The Growth Advisory Panel made its first presentation to the council at Monday's public meeting after discussing for several months ways of addressing booming growth -- a subject many feel is Southern Nevada's most pressing issue.

"Currently, more than 90 percent of our capital budget pays for infrastructure in new areas," City Manager Virginia Valentine, a member of GAP, said after the presentation.

Calling the report a "more rational plan" than what currently exists, Valentine asked the council to "give us the direction to prepare and implement these programs."

By accepting the report, the council did not necessarily approve its findings. Action on defined policy proposals would be taken at future meetings, most likely after a needs assessment study, which would be conducted by an outside firm, Valentine said.

Impact fees provide a standard fee schedule that is evenly applied to all developers based on their projects' impact on local transportations and drainage systems. The council was told that impact fees could pay for roads, parks and police substations.

The panel said in its report that an impact fee "lends predictability to the development process, provides a mechanism for growth to pay its way and has the potential to free-up funds for improvements and maintenance of existing infrastructure."

Mayor Jan Laverty Jones said the city is constantly looking for ways "where growth pays for growth."

Under a Nevada law that was passed several years ago, local governments are permitted to establish impact fees, which the city of Reno currently does.

GAP member Mark Doppe, former president of the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association, said his organization supports that impact fee law because it means all developers will share the burden for building out a large area.

"Impact fees are hard to get on but they force (a developer) to come up with a well thought-out plan," he said.

However Doppe warned that impact fees are not a catch-all solution to all growth problems.

Impact fees ideally would reduce the number of conditions -- street improvements, traffic lights, etc. -- which currently are placed on a developer by the government. Such conditions force a developer to sell the houses he builds at a greater price than he initially planned so he can recoup those city-imposed costs.

One problem with impact fees could be that developers would further jack up the price of houses, claiming they have to pay huge impact fees, when in reality those fees are similar to -- or even less than -- what they currently pay for city-imposed improvements.

Doppe said he does not believe that will occur because the Nevada law is different from laws in California, which have resulted in "so much abuse that a moderate-income family cannot afford a home."

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