If approved by the City Council, only Austin and New Braunfels would have higher combined water/wastewater impact fees than Kyle, although Austin’s wastewater impact fees alone would actually be significantly lower than Kyle’s.
In the other significant action during last night’s meeting, the commissioners disregarded their own landscape ordinance changes they recently completed after two whole years of discussions, agreeing to something that wasn't even on the agenda that allows BioLife Plasma Services to plant 20.7 percent fewer trees than the ordinance calls for.
Impact fees are payments required by local governments of new development for the purpose of providing new or expanded public capital facilities required to serve that development. The impact fees discussed by the Planning & Zoning Commission are supposed to be strictly for capital water and wastewater improvements and would nominally be paid by developers prior to the platting of a new subdivision. However, in calculating the new rates, the costs of the wastewater treatment plant expansion and the HCPUA water supply — items that affect all city residents, not just those in planned new developments — were factored into the equation.
Realistically, however, these costs are not borne by the developers; they are simply passed along to home buyers, meaning the cost of a new home in Kyle would be, in all likelihood, greater than the cost of that same home in Buda, San Marcos, Round Rock, Plugerville, Cedar Park or just about anywhere else in Central Texas.
Those increased housing costs, however, would also naturally lead to increased property values which means the city of Kyle could conceivably accompany these massive impact fee increases with a lower property tax rates. We’ll just have to wait and see if that ever happens.
There is a related argument that says if the higher property values that result from the increase in impact fees are not accompanied by a corresponding increase in government services provided, that will depress the market, resulting in lower housing costs. These assumptions are all based, however, on the proposition homebuilders are willing to throw the dice and build in Kyle with those higher impact fees in place.
Local governments throughout the country are increasingly using impact fees to shift more of the costs of financing public facilities from the general taxpayer to the beneficiaries of those new facilities. These fees have been criticized, however, as being an inequitable means to finance public facilities. By requiring new development to pay for new facilities without benefitting from existing facility capacity, local governments may be bypassing the traditional practice of intergenerational contribution toward public facilities. Some commentators have argued that, when set at high levels such as those proposed last night by the Planning and Zoning Commission, impact fees may also tend to be regressive. Certain public facilities may be considered "public goods" that should be financed by the entire community. It’s equivalent to the school board passing a tax rate increase to cover the cost of a new school that only applies to properties belonging to those who will send their children to that particular school.
None of this was discussed at Tuesday’s P&Z Commission meeting, because it appears the commission has been rendered rudderless with former Chair Mike Rubsam’s departure from the commission and absolutely clueless from the members’ apparent reluctance to conduct any valid independent research. The discussion was limited, for all practical purposes, to acting chair Timothy Kay making the outlandish statement that the proposed 46.9 percent increase of the rates set in 2008 mirrored the rate of inflation during that same period. (The actual total rate of inflation between 2008 and 2016 is 13.5 percent,)
The only hint at an on-point discussion of the increases came when commissioner Allison Wilson noted Kyle’s proposed fee was, according to her tabulations, $1,200 higher than the average impact fee imposed by other Central Texas municipalities and wondered whether that was because "all the other cities already have infrastructure that wouldn’t require such a huge cost."
Grady Reed of HDR, Inc., the hired gun sent to convince the commissioners to recommend these increases replied "That’s a hard question to answer," which, for him, was the truth because if he answered it honestly it would destroy his entire argument. He finally said "It’s like comparing your various utility rates and wondering why they are different." Huh?
Reed went on to say, however, "If I’m another city and, even if I’m growing rapidly, if I’ve secured my water supply for the next 50 years then I’m likely to have lower impact fees," which is an amazing statement considering how loudly Kyle officials have bragged about how they, unlike officials in surrounding communities, have secured not only an adequate water supply for the city but have enough water available so that they can sell some to their neighbors to the north. Wilson, however, allowed Reed’s gibberish to pass without additional comment or questioning and the commission wound up unanimously recommending the rate increase.
But that was nowhere close to the heights of ridiculousness reached during last night’s meeting. That came when the commissioners voted to amend something that didn’t even exist. I’m not making this up. It was like building an addition to your house before you build the house.
It came during the discussion over the amount of trees BioLife was going to be excused from planting when Kay made a motion to amend something that wasn’t going to be voted on until after they held the vote to amend it.
To put it bluntly, the Planning & Zoning Commission is a mess right now which would be funny were it not for the fact that, after the City Council, P&Z is the most powerful and influential legislative body in the city. Last night the commissioners:
- Could not even figure out how to correctly handle the consent agenda.
- Left a public hearing in some form of netherworld limbo even though Planning Director Howard Koontz clearly, understandably and forcefully instructed the commissioners ahead of time they must officially leave the hearing open until the commission’s next meeting.
- Appeared to be absolutely clueless about how to act on a number of items, asking the staff, in effect, to instruct the commissioners on what decisions they should make.
It’s getting to the point where it seems necessary for the city to impose some more stringent pre-screening of candidates to the commission, perhaps going to far as to require those who wish to serve on P&Z to pass some form of a Planning & Zoning Scholastic Aptitude Test.
The 58-to-45 reduction of the number of trees BioLife was required by the recently amended landscape ordinance to plant on its soon-to-be under-construction campus on Seton Parkway, across from the new Goodwill, wasn’t even on last night’s agenda. This was an "Oh, by the way," addition the project’s engineer threw in at the last moment right before the commission was prepared to vote on Biolife’s landscape ordinance waiver request that was on the agenda. And that was the reason commissioner Irene Melendez told me she was the only member of the commission to vote against the idea.
"I just didn’t think he was prepared and he wanted to make these changes so quickly," Melendez said. "I didn’t feel comfortable making those changes just on the fly. He’s a business owner and all the other business owners are abiding by the ordinance, I think he should as well."
