By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

A group of Fayette county and city staff and elected officials will meet again this week or next to try and iron out differences over impact fees for the new Fayette County Jail.

Fayetteville and Tyrone officials continue to question the formula for charging the fees to businesses and industries, while Peachtree City officials remain opposed to charging any fees to businesses and industries, arguing instead for placing the entire burden on new homes.

“We need to leave industries alone,” said Peachtree City Councilman Robert Brooks following a recent council meeting.

Impact fees are levied on new construction to help defray the costs of new government facilities and services made necessary by growth.

Fayette's County Commission voted early this year to impose impact fees to help pay the $25 million cost of a new jail and for new fire stations and fire services.

Since Peachtree City and Fayetteville provide their own fire services, there is no need for a cooperative agreement on those services, but the jail is a county-wide facility, and the commission's vote included the caveat that all cities must agree to impose and collect the fees within their borders if the fees are to be used at all.

Therein lies the rub. Fayetteville, Tyrone and Peachtree City already collect impact fees for various services within their borders, and all three use different formulas and methods of figuring the fees. Coming up with a common method for the jail fees has been difficult thus far.

During a meeting July 11, officials directed assistant County Attorney Dennis Davenport to rework the formula for charging different fees for several categories of business, industry and institutional construction. When the new formula was faxed to governments last week, it drew some negative reaction.

“The revised program does not appear to apply impact fees fairly to the various nonresidential uses,” said Tyrone Town Manager Barry Amos in a memo to the mayor and Town Council. For instance, he said, the formula would give religious organizations more than three times the “weight” of construction firms in calculating fees.

“Weight” is a number assigned to each category based on its projected impact on jail population.

“It is difficult to envision how a religious organization would create three and one-third times the demand for jail services over a general contractor, bank or similar users that have a jail demand factor of one,” said Amos.

The formula, which would impose fees based on square footage multiplied by the weight factor, also should have a ceiling built in, said Amos. “While this revised fee schedule is an improvement, it would still result in a project such as Bowers paying an impact fee of between $134,278 and $447,144 depending on what type of business locates there,” he said. “This could still result in difficulty in attracting desirable business.”

Meanwhile, Peachtree City officials remain opposed to any impact fees for business and industry.

During a recent discussion with Bost and Davenport, City Attorney Rick Lindsey said the city would have to “credit” the new business or industry for other obligations if it collects the impact fee.

“That's like taking $100,000 out of my pocket,” said Mayor Bob Lenox..

Lenox said the cities don't have to use the same system for collecting impact fees. But Davenport said the county would prefer for everyone to agree since the plan must be approved by the state Department of Community Affairs before the fees can be collected.

“I really don't care if it matches up with what you're doing,” Lenox said. “Legally, they don't have to be exactly the same.”

“We're trying to get something that's acceptable to everybody,” Bost said. “We're trying to get everybody to agree so the new growth can start paying for the jail.”