Brandon Leuallen, The Business Times

At the Grand Junction City Council workshop on Dec. 16, council members Scott Beilfuss and Cody Kennedy brought up concerns about impact fees adding to the cost of single-family homes. This led to discussion about what possible alternatives there are for the city.

Beilfuss said, “What I’m getting at is after conversations with the builders and developers about costs, everything is higher here because we are isolated. There’s a lot of pushback on the community’s fees. So, I’m not sure that 800 units a year is realistic. Whereas, I feel like our biggest economic challenge is single family-housing for the workforce.”

After Mayor Abram Herman asked for further explanation, Beilfuss responded, “If we’re not building a much-increased number of single-family affordable housing, we’re not drawing businesses here, we’re not drawing workers here, we’re not growing. … I think we have to be very careful with fees. I don’t know if there’s other places to look for money. We have so little from property taxes that I’m sure other cities have a lot more from that area, so that shifts everything to fees.”

Kennedy agreed with Beilfuss and said, “I also want to acknowledge the shortage of the housing that we have, without even talking about the growth, but just to provide additional options for people to buy or rent additional homes. It’s a supply-and-demand issue, and certainly as we increase fees I would anticipate that we would see a reduction in new houses coming online.”

Herman said, “That’s our policy question, we can pay for it in other ways. That’s what we did in 2019 with our tax increase for our first responders, because we hadn’t paid for that due to lack of impact fees. That’s what we did with our 60 million dollars in debt that we took on, because our impact fees haven’t paid for our infrastructure. Basically, every tax increase that we’ve had in recent years has been a result of growth not paying for itself. So, those are our options.”

Council member Anna Stout said, “The other thing that I think is tough to keep in mind when we’re having this conversation, because we have an acute crisis right now that we’re dealing with from a housing perspective. It is tough not to just look at what we’re going through right now and not cast our gaze 30 years down the road and make sure that we are also being a fiscally responsible community that’s able to continue having a high-quality community.”

Later Stout added, “We could get to this point where we make it so easy to build houses now, but we don’t look down the road and we have a ton of houses here that aren’t filled, because the community isn’t pleasant to live in anymore, because we haven’t ensured that we can pay for the community that we’re becoming.”

Carson Bise II, president of city-hired consulting firm TischlerBise, responded, “Dealing with affordability, you know, I think I’ve mentioned this in other meetings, we’re not working anywhere in the country where there isn’t a concern about housing affordability, right? And the impact these structures play into that. … And I know that we’ve also talked about if you waive fees, you need to make up the difference from other funding sources.”

The Business Times reviewed the impact-fee study. Page 5 of the draft impact-fee study says, “The City may adopt fees that are less than the amounts shown. However, a reduction in impact fee revenue will necessitate an increase in other revenues, a decrease in planned capital expenditures, and/or a decrease in levels of service.”

It also says, “By law impact fees can only be used for capital improvements, not operating or maintenance costs.”

The Business Times reached out to City Council member Dennis Simpson about what alternatives could be to raising the fees.

Simpson said, “We never look for decreasing expenditures without affecting services, and I think that is something we could look at.”

When asked about the 10-year capital project budget, Simpson noted only one of the next five years is projected to have expenditures lower than revenue.

When asked why the city is budgeting more expenditures than it brings in on the capital plan, Simpson responded, “That was a big point during the budget discussions for me, and I basically got no answer, which was one of the reasons I voted no on the budget.”

Simpson noted the current budget was not done under new City Manager Mike Bennett.

Simpson acknowledged the city could reduce regulations to lower capital-project costs, but he said recent additions, such as bicycle trails and wide sidewalks, have increased expenses.

When asked how decisions are made regarding the design and cost of parks, his response highlighted that politics often play a significant role, typically with minimal pushback. However, Whitman Park redevelopment has sparked debate among council members over the funding involved.

The cost listed on the 10-year capital plan for the redesign and activation of Whitman Park is $5,025,000 over the next two years, including planning.