Gorham officials are considering an end to taxes now collected in the form of impact fees on new homes before they’re built and before homeowners even move in.
At the behest of the Town Council, the Gorham Planning Board is reviewing the fees and will make a recommendation whether to eliminate two impact fees – one for the new middle school and a recreational and open space fee.
Town Councilor Burleigh Loveitt, former chairman, said last week that current impact fees are inequitable among neighbors and unfair. Loveitt said it’s a tax against people who aren’t living in Gorham now.
“It’s an easy, stealthy tax,” Loveitt said.
The Planning Board will discuss those impact fees in a workshop at 6 p.m. on Monday at the municipal center, 75 South St. Citizens had an opportunity to speak at Planning Board meeting Nov. 3, but no one attended the public hearing, and the board Monday is expected set a date for another public opportunity to be heard.
Gorham Town Manager David Cole said impact fees are one- time charges and are intended to make residential growth pay more of its own way as towns put in infrastructure to accommodate a growing population.
Cole said the impact fees in Gorham apply to residential building permits for single-family units. They would not apply to a building permit for a commercial or industrial development or to a building permit for a garage.
For example, Cole said, when the middle school was built, the town had an immediate need to build a school for 600 students. The school was build larger (for 900 students) because the town assumed it would need the space in the future as the community continued to grow. Otherwise, the new school would have already been filled to capacity the first day the doors were opened.
“The cost of that extra space can be paid for through impact fees rather than asking current taxpayers to pay higher property taxes to build the infrastructure needed to accommodate people who do not yet live here,” Cole said.
Loveitt said Gorham’s middle school and recreation and open space impact fees add up to about $5,000 for a new home, based on the number of bedrooms. But, he said, owners adding bedrooms to older homes are not charged impact fees.
“It’s not fair – that’s my complaint,” Loveitt said.
The middle school opened in 2003. Loveitt called the middle school fee “philosophically disagreeable” because the town voted to build the school in a 2001 referendum.
The Planning Board asked Planning Department staff to provide information about impact fees in other communities. “We’re pulling together research info for them,” Town Planner Deborah Fossum said.
Gorham’s code office collects the impact fees. Code Enforcement Officer Clint Cushman last week cited a typical example. Cushman said the middle school impact fee for a new, single-family home with three bedrooms would be $2,182.50, with another $1,715 for a recreation and open space impact fee. The total comes to $4,897.50, and the fees are not tied to construction cost of the home.
Cushman said no impact fees would be assessed to owners adding bedrooms to older homes unless the expansion created a new dwelling unit like, for instance, a duplex. A building permit in Gorham for a $200,000 home is now $2,095 in addition to the impact fees.
In addition to the impact fees for the middle school and recreation facilities and open space, Cole said Gorham also has an impact fee for the Fort Hill water main extension. Loveitt doesn’t object to that impact fee because, he said, it’s a fee for a service provided to a home.
Cushman said the water main impact fee for new structures on Fort Hill Road varies, depending on location, from $732 to $225 per dwelling. An existing home isn’t required to connect to public water unless the septic system fails, Cushman said.
Cole said the middle school impact fee is used to pay part of the debt on the school, and currently has about $100,000 in the account. Cole said the recreation facilities impact fee may be used to develop recreation facilities at the Little Falls Recreation area, the Chick Property (site of the public safety building and Narragansett Elementary School), town property on Weeks Road or the phase 2 fields at the middle school.
“These funds were used to build the new fields at the middle schoo,l which is a project still in progress, so I don’t know how much will be left over after the project is completed,” Cole said.
“The smaller open space part of that fee probably contains about $90,000 or so and the Fort Hill water main impact fee is used to pay our share of extending the water main over Fort Hill. The funds are paid to the Portland Water District. So at any point in time we may have several thousand in the account until they are transferred,” Cole said.
Michael Starn of the Maine Municipal Association said Monday impact fees are legal and more common in high growth areas of the state. He said Maine has guidelines for municipalities implementing impact fees.
Loveitt said the Council could vote on impact fees in December.
Mike Wing of Play Gorham, a group supporting more athletic fields, said new development has impacted existing recreational spaces.
“It has put a strain on the overall picture,” Wing said about growth. “As far as fields go, we have a big gap.”
Wing said there’s a shortage of fields even with impact fees.
“Those impact fees will be crucial in the future,” Wing said, but, he added the big challenge for the community involving fees is how to be fair.
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