This and that: City council(s) edition
West Side hits brakes on development fees on sewers. City demands tax break answers from Inari. Human relations commissions join hands. What still needs to be done for Creasy Lane traffic.
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How about a few notes catching up with Monday’s city council meetings on both sides of the river.
In West Lafayette …
COUNCIL PUTS BRAKES ON WASTEWATER DEVELOPMENT FEES, FOR NOW: A proposal to replace a tap-in fee with a wastewater system development charge in West Lafayette hit a snag Monday, when developers told city council members they were blindsided by the idea.
The city council voted 7-1 to table a proposed ordinance until its Aug. 3 meeting to have a chance to review the lineup of charges city officials said would be a way to collect and save money for future wastewater projects without depending on rate increases for existing residents.
The proposed, one-time charges on new development would set fees by meter size, ranging from $2,500 for ones servicing a single-family house to $400,000 for an industry with a 12-inch meter. The fees would replace a $400 tap-in fee that Corby Thompson, a financial consultant with O.W. Krohn & Associates, said “hardly covers even the costs to get them connected into the system.”
If approved by the city council, the fees would be charged for any new development, starting immediately. Thompson said that at current rates of development, the city could expect to bring in $500,000 to $1 million a year. He said that figure would fluctuate depending on waves of growth in the city.
But several developers, along with the Builders Association of Greater Lafayette, questioned the move, saying it was putting the burden on new construction.
“I guess you guys can imagine that I am not for doing a rate increase in this way,” Ryan Kennedy, a West Lafayette homebuilder, told the city council. “West Lafayette is very quickly becoming one of the more unaffordable places to build a house through measures like this.”
