Jefferson County has been collecting impact fees on new construction projects since 2004. The initial fee schedule was based on a 2003 report prepared by TischlerBise, a Maryland-based consulting firm that specializes in fiscal and economic planning for local governments. The county had TischlerBise update its recommendations again in a 2015 report. At that time, the County Commission updated the fees to only 70% of what was recommended by TischlerBise, according to notes in the annual reports produced by the County’s Office of Impact Fees.
The Commission recently hired TischlerBise to produce a new report, which is due on November 13. The Commission has scheduled a public hearing on the report for Tuesday, November 19 at 6:00 pm in the Charles Town Library basement meeting room. According to dicusssions during recent meetings, the Commisioners intend to vote on Thursday, November 21 and have the new fee schedule effective on January 1 2025.
Impact fees are authorized by West Virginia law. The fees collected are restricted to specific uses, to cover the costs of infrastructure expansion specifically related to increased demand from growth. Buildings and equipment can be paid for with impact fees, but staffing, operations, and maintenance cannot. For building and equipment, the eligible expense is limited to the portion needed to serve new growth — just replacing old buildings or equipment is not covered by impact fees.
The expenses covered by impact fees must be proportionate to the new demand — the county can’t charge commercial development for school buildings for example. Likewise, if the county develops a new park that is used by the entire community, the cost has to be allocated across the entire population so that impact fees will cover only the new-growth share of the expense, not the entire amount.
In September 2021, the County Commission voted to reduce the school impact fee to $1 for all residential categories. Prior to that vote, the school impact fee was $6,344 for single family houses, $7,146 for duplexes and townhouse units, and $4,432 for apartment units. The overall reduction in impact fee collections is visible in the graph of 2004-2023 fee collections.
The impact fee ordinance includes an inflation adjustment recommendation, based on specific price indices published by the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis. The inflation factors used to calculate the 2023 impact fees were 3% for schools, 6% for parks and public safety, and 7% for administrative facilities. The inflation factors used to calculate the 2024 fees were 16% for schools, 12% for parks, 12% for parks, 13% for public safety, and 20% for administrative facilities. Since the school impact fees were set to $1, the inflation calculation yielded no increase for 2023 or 2024.
According to the County’s impact fee annual reports, the inflation number is an after-the-fact calculation. For example, the 2024 factors, applied in April of this year, use numbers based on 2022 inflation. Since it’s a lagging number, it’s likely that the inflation trends will continue to suggest increases in the impact fees for the next few years. However, it will be up to the Commission to vote each year on whether to follow through on the recommended adjustments.
