Impact of Fees

What a fine Alibi!  This week's issue is rich.  Tim McGivern nails the issues surrounding impact fees and homebuilding in Sudden Impact.   

Anointed spokesman-for-all-things-development, Jim Folkman, spewed several of his typical anti-planning talking points:

• Fees drive sprawl.
• If you regulate, they will go.
• If developers go, you will lose.
• Rio Rancho will win.
• Fair Fees are OK, but these aren't.
• Developers understand the market, and you don't.
• If you regulate, you will lose.
• If you lose, you will feel small and insecure.

McGivern gets that the developers' chief interest is in homebuilding.   He also gets how homebuilding is distinct from economic development and how economic development projects are exempt from impact fees.

When it comes to job growth, the Westside remains the top target for economic developers in the city. So far, the job market has not come close to satisfying the population growth; the traffic problems at the river crossings still indicate that most folks are commuting to work on the east side of the river.

So if there is one thing all sides agree on, it's that Westside industrial and commercial development will assuage some of the area's planning problems. For this reason, industrial development is largely exempt from the city's new impact fee regulations. For example, the anticipated business offices and new companies that should sprout around the Eclipse Aviation plant, near Double Eagle Airport, would one day receive exemptions, as would any other industrial or manufacturing center that would bring new jobs to the area.

So quit 'yer bitchin 'bout the fees.

In the same issue of the Alibi, Jim Scarantino again points out another dirty demonstration of arrogance on the part of Mayor Martin Chavez related to garbage fees.   If he gets re-elected he's non-stick-coated.

Or this is Chinatown.  Coco

Comments

[Maggie]

great post, love this blog!

[Coco]

Thanks Maggie! Your's is the best. Coco