Kalispell City Council members took away very different messages from a Monday night vote to reduce the burden of impact fees on a small business trying to relocate from one part of downtown to another. The debate concerned a request by PB&J, a Christian bookstore and café, to have its transportation and sewer impact fees reconsidered from an initial estimate of $1,800, which would have prohibited relocating, down to about $200, by basing the fee assessment on different data.
“This exercise points up to the fact that we better revisit impact fees,” Councilman Bob Hafferman said. “It just boggles my mind that every time somebody moves we’ve got to go in and refigure whether they’re going to have more traffic, more sewer or what.”
“All we ever do is harass citizens,” Hafferman added. “That’s why people are not particularly fond of Kalispell.”
But other members of the council did not see it that way.
“I think it worked perfectly,” Councilman Randy Kenyon said. “This is exactly the way that I had thought it would work out and it did.”
“This is all the more reason to not look at it,” Kenyon added, “because it simply works.”
Pam Kennedy, presiding over her last meeting as mayor of Kalispell, also took issue with Hafferman’s statement, saying she “absolutely” disagreed with him, and adding, “the people of Kalispell are proud of their community.”
In describing her recommendation that the city assess a reduced impact fee only for sanitary sewer, Kalispell City Manager Jane Howington said PB&J was simply using one of the options built
into the city’s transportation impact fee policy, which was adopted in March, allowing the city to reconsider the fee assessment in light of extenuating circumstances.
Transportation impact fees are designed to help pay for the road maintenance and improvements necessitated by new development, but the issue has long been controversial, with the business community arguing the fees stifle growth. The fees are calculated by estimating the traffic generated by a business, so a retail store pays more than a single-family house, since it would have customers driving to and from it more frequently.
For PB&J, the calculations were based upon the Institute of Traffic Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Manual. Using those numbers led Nancy Johnson, PB&J’s owner, to calculate she would owe $1,227.18 in transportation impact fees, even though she merely sought to relocate, but not expand her business. But after working with Assistant City Engineer Paul E. Burnham, Johnson spent four days recording the actual data of her customers: whether they walked or drove to PB&J, and whether it was her customer’s primary destination, or a stop along the way.
The conclusion of the findings was that traffic would actually be less at PB&J’s new location, 35 First Avenue East, than what previously occurred there – so Johnson won’t have to pay transportation impact fees, but will owe $199.92 for the sanitary sewer impact.
“The good part about it is that everybody was right,” Howington told the council. “This process worked very well.”
The vote to reduce the fees passed 7-1 with Hafferman opposed.