The Jefferson County Commission plans to move county and court functions out of the old jail annex and historic courthouse.
The Jefferson County Commission is pretty clear it wants impact fees to cover a significant portion of the costs of the two buildings it plans to purchase in July. How much it can collect is not so clear.
Impact fees are paid by developers when they get building permits for new construction (both residential and commercial) anywhere in the county. In January 2025, the Commission voted to approve new impact fees for building permits issued after June 1. At the time of the January vote, the Commission knew it planned to purchase the 393 North Lawrence Street property for use as a county administration building. When the Commission later agreed to purchase the 303 North George Street property for use as the county judicial center, it also asked its staff to make another update to the impact fees.
The County Commission has contracted with TishlerBise, a consulting firm that specializes in impact fee analysis, to assist with calculating the fees appropriate for the new county buildings. Since mid-April, the Commission has released three draft versions of a revised impact fee study.
The most recent version of the impact fee study (dated May 20 2025) is available here.
A Shifting Approach
In the May 20 2025 version of the report, the fees for the administrative buildings were calculated using the “cost recovery” methodology. The May 8 2025 version of the report used the “plan-based” methodology and the December 4 2024 version of the report used the “incremental expansion” methodology. The County Commission has not yet provided a specific reason for why it changed methodologies with each version of the report.
According to the definitions in the TishlerBise reports, “cost recovery” looks at the “useful life and remaining capacity” of all the facilities that will be used during the analysis period (for Jefferson County, that includes the two new buildings plus any buildings the Commission will continue to maintain for county functions during the next 20 years). The “plan-based” approach considers just a specific set of improvements (in this case, that was just the two new buildings). The “incremental expansion” approach calculates a “level of service” standard based on current facilities and applies the cost of creating that same level of service for future growth.
Measuring The Existing Space
All of the impact fee reports include an inventory of the existing buildings. In the May 20 report, the total square feet measured for these buildings is reported as 91,812. In the two prior reports, the space for the existing buildings was reported as 145,267 square feet.
The Observer recently did some field measurements and calculated approximately 109,000 square feet for the listed buildings.
Although the Commission staff has not acknowledged the measurement differences, the discrepancies may be the reason for the use of “cost recovery” in the most recent report, as this methodology does not rely on the measurement of the existing buildings that will not be maintained for future county use.
A Final Decision Soon
After originally scheduling, then postponing a discussion on revised impact fees at its May 1 and May 15 meetings, the Commission has indicated it hopes to take action on updating the fee for the administrative buildings at its June 5 meeting.
By Steve Pearson