Impact Fees

I firmly believe that new developments should bear the cost of the impact to the county to provide services to support the new development,

I would also like to see a change in how we impose impact fees. Currently, we have one service area for the entire county. State law allows the county to set up multiple service areas. Each service area can be charged fees based on the real costs to provide the infrastructure/level of services needed to support new development in that area.

Impact fees can be a double edge sword, and our current plan has unintended consequences. State law does not require counties and cities to impose impact fees. Currently only 22 counties out of 159 and only 29 cities out of 535 here in Georgia impose impact fees. Developers seek to annex their property into the boundary of a city for two reasons, they will be able to gain approval for higher density and in some cases, they will be able to avoid paying impact fees. Our current impact fee program has also discouraged economic development that would bring good jobs to Cherokee County.

I would like to change how we impose impact fees. Currently, we have one service area for the entire county. State law allows the county to set up multiple service areas. Each service area can be charged fees based on the real costs to provide the infrastructure/level of services needed to support new development in that area. When new development is allowed to leap-frog into rural area that have minimal infrastructure, the cost to provide those services is far greater. I would propose that we set up the areas based on the character areas in our land-use plan.