Brandon Leuallen, The Business Times

The Grand Junction City Council agreed during its Dec. 15 workshop to adopt revisions to the city’s parks and recreation impact fees after additional analysis and extended discussion about housing affordability, legal defensibility and how the city should fund park infrastructure as it grows.

The decision follows a request from the Housing and Building Association of Western Colorado to reconsider the parks portion of the impact-fee schedule approved earlier this year. According to materials provided to council for the workshop, builders raised concerns that the parks fee relied on land values that did not reflect where future parks are likely to be built and could unnecessarily increase the cost of new homes.

Why city reopened parks impact fee

Grand Junction is required by municipal code to periodically review and update its impact-fee studies.

According to the “Parks Impact Fee Discussion” executive summary included in the Dec. 15 City Council workshop packet, the most recent impact-fee update was completed with assistance from TischlerBise and adopted by council in April 2025. That update eliminated the city’s prior parkland dedication requirement and replaced it with a recalculated parks impact fee collected at the time of building-permit issuance.

The city’s updated impact-fee recommendations were based on a Development Impact Fee Update & Study by TischlerBise, contracted in April 2024 for a not-to-exceed cost of $149,810, an amount negotiated to stay within the city’s $150,000 budget.  

The parks fee drew scrutiny. According to a letter included in the packet, the Housing and Building Association of Western Colorado argued the fee overstated parkland-acquisition costs by averaging high-value downtown and multifamily properties with lower-cost residential land on the city’s edges.

The association also cited state law and federal court precedent governing development exactions, arguing impact fees must be proportionate to the actual impacts of new development. Builders requested that council delay implementation of the increased parks fee and revise the methodology used to calculate land-acquisition costs.

Consultant analysis and staff response

City staff responded by developing several alternative land-value calculations. According to the staff presentation, these options involved removing downtown properties, removing central city properties or removing the highest and lowest land values from the dataset.

The staff report emphasized the revised approach does not eliminate the parks-impact fee, but recalibrates it to better reflect likely future-acquisition areas.

Option 1 removes downtown properties from the land-value dataset.

Option 2 removes central city properties from the dataset.

Option 3 removes the highest and lowest land values (outliers) from the dataset.

Council debate over affordability and housing impacts

During council discussion, members expressed differing levels of priorities on how the parks impact fee affects housing affordability, particularly for entry-level homes.

Council member Ben VanDyke warned that various rising fees disproportionately affect lower-priced housing.

“It takes the bottom end out of the market. It takes the starter home out of the market, so we can build whatever we want into our policy to create the park system we want to have. But at the end of the day, I think it’s important that we all remember that we will have neighbors that cannot afford to live in that subdivision,” Van Dyke said.

Council member Anna Stout talked about parks being underfunded when she originally came into city council and said, “When people buy a home in a new subdivision, they expect parks. That’s part of what they’re buying into. They expect there to be parks nearby, and they expect the city to be able to maintain that level of service as the community grows.”

Van Dyke responded, “I was just at a meeting recently where housing affordability was the number one issue people were talking about. It wasn’t parks. It was whether people can afford to live here, and I think that has to be part of this conversation as we’re making these decisions.” 

Mayor Cody Kennedy said they are trying to balance the city’s need to fund parks without discouraging development of needed housing.

“I don’t want to short the city on the revenue that we need in order to construct the parks that we need for development,” he said. “But at the same time, I don’t think it’s necessary that we gouge developers, when they’re building these developments that we need. We need more affordability in our housing market.”

Council member Jason Nguyen argued the magnitude of the parks impact fee should be kept in perspective relative to broader market forces.

“It’s a couple hundred dollars on each unit. Yes, that’s something,” Nguyen said. “But when housing prices have gone up – in early 2020 the average home price in Junction was under 300,000 dollars, and now it’s like 413,000 – so yeah, we’re taking a couple hundred dollars off. It’s real money, but it’s maybe not what’s driving the affordability crisis.”

“I get it,” Stout said. “It’s challenging when we are in a housing crisis, but at the same time it’s every expense we run into as well: police; fire; any of our services. The costs aren’t going down during the housing crisis either.” 

Van Dyke stressed that a single fee isn’t the only reason costs are going up, but the cumulative costs on new homes add up.

“I think sometimes we focus on one thing at a time, a couple hundred dollars here, a couple hundred dollars there, and each one on its own doesn’t seem like much,” he said. “But when you stack them all together, whether it’s parks, transportation, fire or other requirements, that’s how housing keeps getting more expensive.”

Council ultimately agreed to proceed with Option 3, which removes high and low land-value outliers from the dataset used to calculate parkland-acquisition costs.