By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@TheCitizenNews.com

The clock is ticking as Fayette governments wrestle over problems with imposition of impact fees to pay for a new Fayette County Jail, and every day of delay costs current county residents $6,000, said County Commission Chairman Harold Bost.

In a work session Tuesday morning, attorneys, political leaders and staff members from the county and local cities decided to take another stab at coming up with a formula for collection of the fees that all can agree on.

If they can't agree, each government can devise a separate formula, but that could weaken the county's chances of collecting some of the $25 million cost of the new jail from the new construction that's making it necessary, according to Dennis Davenport, assistant county attorney.

“Will that cause a red flag? Sure it'll cause a red flag,” Davenport told the group assembled at the County Administrative Complex Tuesday. “The DCA [state Department of Community Affairs] has two options at that point — to approve it or not to approve it. If they don't approve it, then we have to see how we can work this out.”

Meanwhile, Bost interjected, the clock would keep ticking and more impact fees would be lost.

Impact fees are charged to new construction to help defray the cost of new government services made necessary by growth. A Fayette County task force has been working for more than a year to devise impact fees to help pay for the new jail and fire services, and has asked the cities to collect fees for the jail, since each city sends its prisoners to the county jail.

Most of the cities have agreed in principle, but contention has developed over whether to charge the fees for new homes, businesses and industries, or to charge only for residential construction.

The original plan adopted by the County Commission early this year called for residential-only impact fees, but the government of Fayetteville objected because that city's current impact fee structure includes both residential and nonresidential.

Davenport said when county experts began pondering that objection, they decided that charging the fees to all types of construction made sense and would give the county a better chance of getting state approval of its impact fee plan.

But leaders in Peachtree City, where most of Fayette's industrial growth occurs, crunched the numbers and concluded that the proposed fees for industrial growth would be too much. If a new industry the size of Photocircuits were to move into the city, it would have to pay almost $400,000 in impact fees, said City Manager Jim Basinger.

“The program proposed by the county is putting an unreasonable burden on the nonresidential, and it could adversely impact the town in terms of attracting light industrial development,” said City Manager Jim Basinger.

The city, which has set aside land for industrial development, is “only half done” with filling that land, said City Attorney Rick Lindsey.

Davenport said that doing away with impact fees on business and industry in Peachtree City would mean increasing the fee for homes from $794.12 to about $1,030 in order to generate the $894,000 that new business and industry would have contributed over 30 years.

But he warned that state regulators and the courts might frown on exempting businesses because they contribute to the need for the new jail.

The group reached a consensus that a formula for business and industry based on square footage might be more equitable than the county's proposed formula based on the number of employees.

Davenport asked each representative to weigh the impact on crime of ten categories of business and industry, and promised to try to come up with a new formula by the end of the week.

That might satisfy Peachtree City's council, said Basinger, as long as there's a cap for the largest businesses and industries, which already mitigate their impact on the community by paying out-of-pocket for transportation improvements like traffic lights, turn lanes and other intersection improvements.

If the governments can agree, they must submit the plan to the state Department of Community Affairs and the Atlanta Regional Commission for approval. Once that's received, then each government must adopt an ordinance finalizing the plan, requiring yet another round of public hearings.

In the best case possible, Davenport said, it will probably be January before the county can begin collecting the fees.