MISSOULA- The Missoula Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously on June 23 to approve the Missoula County Community and Planning Services (CAPS) resolution to increase land use fees effective July 1.
Missoula County Community and Planning Services (CAPS) assesses fees to applicants to cover the review of new construction and development applications related to subdivision, floodplain, zoning and more. The County adopted the proposal in response to the inflationary increases to the current cost of County project review, along with zoning compliance permit fees in the recently adopted County zoning code.
According to Karen Hughes, the Assistant Director of Missoula County CAPS, land use fees were set in 2011 and have not been updated since due to several factors including recovery from the Great Recession, major code updates in the world and the pandemic.
Since 2011, the cost of providing development review services has continued to rise.
The current fees were based on a recovery of 50% of the actual cost of development review processes as assessed in a 2010 study. A 50% recovery assumes that while development review benefits property owners and developers, the public also benefits because effective review contributes to well-planned communities.
According to Hughes, this means taxpayers are absorbing “more than their share” of the cost to complete land use reviews. It also means the County is not generating enough revenue to cover staffing needs for development review.
“The revenue from land use fees is an essential component to helping us maintain an efficient and appropriately staffed office which makes sure that we can process applications and avoid delays in those reviews,” Hughes said.
Before the resolution was approved, Hughes was asked whether CAPS considered the impact this fee increase will have on contractors and developers. On June 9, the Missoula County Commissioners also approved a resolution to increase building permit fees effective Sept. 1, which would compound the land-use fees.
“It’s the commissioner’s discretion as to how they want to deal with it,” Hughes said. “We’ve talked about options, so we can cover just using the existing resources we have. We’re just not able to give the increases that we’re facing, which is coming from the development community, and they’re seeing pressure to bring these projects forward. So it’s one issue compounds the other, we realize, but that’s always been the case that the different reviews require different fees.”
According to Commissioner Josh Slotnick, 50% of the new fees will be absorbed by developers or contractors while the other 50% will be absorbed by taxpayers. The resolution also included an additional annual adjustment of land use fees.
“These costs have gone up but when you look at the price of a house, these fees are just a very small piece,” Slotnick said.
Hughes was also asked how the land use fee increase fits into Missoula’s affordable housing plan. Hughes said CAPS helped put the Missoula affordable housing plan in place and is in the process of implementing it.
The plan includes many of the same parameters of the land use fee resolution, including reviewing their development review processes and appropriately scaling fees to ensure they are covering the costs of development services so there is funding available to cover other planning services.
“This is all linked together,” Hughes said. “We recognize that any fees contribute to housing costs and we recognize these are low in comparison to the total cost of housing, but providing some cost recovery to help support that part of planning means we have funds available to make sure we’re doing more proactive planning.”
For more information on the proposed increase, visit https://missoulacountyvoice.com/increase-to-and-use-fees. To see the proposed fee increases visit https://www.seeleylake.com/home/customer_files/article_documents/landusefees.pdf.
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