Candidates outline positions on development costs
The Columbia City Council campaign is in full swing.
On March 15, the Columbia Board of Realtors and the Boone County Smart Growth Coalition sponsored a council candidate forum in the CBOR conference room, attended by 3rd Ward candidates Gary Kespohl and Karl Skala, 4th Ward candidates Mike Holden and Jerry Wade, and mayoral candidates Darwin Hindman and John Clark. Dave Griggs moderated the forum.
Growth and infrastructure development were among the topics raised at the forum. An excerpt:
Griggs: Describe the fairest and most effective way to pay for increased offsite infrastructure demands associated with growth. Please be specific about who should pay, how much they should pay and when they should pay.
Holden: I think that development should pay a proportionate share of the cost of new infrastructure. I think in a lot of cases development is doing that right now. We have lots of good examples where development has paid for offsite improvements for additional streets or additional traffic signals and things like that. The city has not kept up its end of the bargain. The city has not been paying its proportionate share of the infrastructure improvements. Specifically, in the 20 years between 1985 and 2005 the amount that the city spent on traffic improvements went down 50 percent. We need to change that. The city should step up and pay more. The ways we do that are with neighborhood improvement districts, TDDs (Transportation Development Districts) and things like that.
Wade: This is a question I’ve been talking about for 10 years. We have to start with impact fees. That cannot be the only way. Impact fees are not paid by developers. They become part of the project cost. They end up being paid for by the end users who buy those new products. But it is a very efficient way to create a pool of money to begin doing focused infrastructure investment. Then we need to put up on the table a whole range of options. I would suggest that the community has been paying more than its share and is looking for the development community and the real estate community to stand up with them, and let us begin to do it together as a community. There is a research project, one research study, that I’ve been able to find that is objective. It suggests that the communities that have impact fees maintain their dynamic of growth. Communities that don’t [have impact fees] lose [their dynamic of growth] because they kill the economic force that keeps them moving. So be careful what you ask for if you try to avoid development fees. You may get it.
Clark: Let’s be real clear. The question says “offsite improvements.” That’s not what they are. What we’re talking about is the public infrastructure by which the city delivers a whole range of services, and it is mandated and supposed to do that. This is not just odd stuff off the wall. This is what they are supposed to do. So the question is about: How should we finance? How should the city finance its public infrastructure so it can meet its responsibilities in such a way that the level of service in that infrastructure does not decrease? This entirely depends on the rate of population growth. This is not about economic growth. It’s about population growth, and if we are still growing at a half percent, as we were in the ‘70s, some of the old ways of financing would work. We need to go back and set up a broad-based citizen commission to examine how to finance all of this together and not on a piecemeal basis, doing this for parks and doing this for roads.
Hindman: I think in the long run we are going to have to have compromises to get this done. The argument is made that development should pay a larger portion than it is paying now. I think that sells well with the voters, and I think the net result of this—and let’s be very practical about it—is we are going to have to find some way, like impact fees or perhaps and excise tax that was discussed before, to put a heavier load on the developers. But the amount is going to have to come out of compromise. Otherwise, I don’t think we can pass these things at the ballot. We’ve got to do that in order to build our streets. So there you are. It’s a matter of sitting down and working out an appropriate compromise.
Skala: I tend to agree with the mayor in this regard. It’s going to have to involve compromise. It’s a complicated question. I was involved with the TARRIF group, and we had been talking about NIDs (Neighborhood Improvement Districts) and TDDs, and those are very different creatures. I think everything has to be on the table, and we’re going to have to discuss everything. I worked with Mr. Griggs on the government affairs committee of the chamber, and we had proposed across-the-board compromises to the chamber board that were not subsequently adopted, but nonetheless we proposed them. There are all kinds of issues here. There may be some self-taxation, but the real issue is not just to share the cost of all this infrastructure. It’s also to participate in sharing some of the benefits. The equity between the cost and the benefits is where this community really has some issues, and we need to deal with those issues quite forthrightly.
Kespohl: I agree with what’s being said here. I don’t know that I have a percentage in mind that the developers should pay. I do believe their fees should be somewhat higher. I go back to the premise that Columbia is a community. We all live together in a community. The purpose of living together in a community is to share costs. That’s why we live together in a community. If I don’t want to pay for someone else’s sewer line extension, I should move to the county. That’s why we live here. No matter how big Columbia gets, we will always be a community. So I just feel we should, as taxpayers and users of those facilities, pay a bigger portion and rebuild the infrastructure.