Schools seek impact fees

The state's largest school district is asking legislators to let schools assess impact fees — outlawed in the mid-1990s — to ease the tax burden for building new schools on homeowners and businesses already settled in fast-growing districts.

"Cities are able to charge impact fees for utilities, sewer, water, police and fire protection, and it just makes sense school districts should be able to charge impact fees to help build the schools," Jordan Board of Education President Peggy Jo Kennett said Wednesday.

District Superintendent Barry Newbold says he has a legislator willing to carry a bill allowing schools to authorize impact fees to mitigate the costs of new growth.

A handful of local cities, including West Jordan, Midvale and Sandy, are looking at or have passed similar resolutions, the Utah League of Cities and Towns reports.

But that doesn't mean the idea, said to be brewing under the surface for a decade, is a slam dunk. Some cities reportedly aren't so hot on the idea. And Realtors say the idea actually will tax people out of homeownership and is counterintuitive to Utah's taxing and educational philosophy.

"We're sincerely interested in the topic (of education funding) and we're sincerely interested in being part of the solution," said Chris Kyler, CEO of the Utah Association of Realtors. But impact fees "are not fair ... and in the end, what they're doing is exacerbating a whole set of problems."

Utah law allows cities and counties to assess impact fees to cover costs of infrastructure to accommodate new development.

Cities gauge the fees as part of a complex analysis, said Lincoln Shurtz, director of legislative affairs for the Utah League of Cities and Towns. Fees can range from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the city, whether the property is residential or commercial, and often, square footage.

In the early 1990s, the law was unclear on whether school districts could impose impact fees, said Burke Jolley, deputy superintendent overseeing business services in Jordan School District. So in times of high growth, some school districts worked with cities and counties, which would levy the fees on their behalf and kick collected revenues back to the schools.

In Park City School District, where Jolley worked at the time, primary residences were assessed a $3,400 impact fee, which ended up being about a third of the actual impact to the school system, Jolley said.

But the practice was halted by lawmakers. Utah law now prohibits schools from collecting or imposing impact fees.