By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

Fire fighting and emergency services are ideal candidates for Fayette's proposed impact fees, a blue ribbon committee was told last week.

“In my opinion, 75 percent of the cost of new facilities for fire and emergency services should be eligible for impact fees,” said Jack Krakeel, director of the county Department of Fire and Emergency Services, during the impact fee committee's third meeting. “I believe the people coming into the county have a responsibility to help pay for those services,” he added.

The group, appointed by county commissioners to find ways that developers can help pay the cost of new government facilities, is getting down to business. In its first two meetings, the group chose a chairman and vice chairman, and decided to focus first on public safety needs.

Krakeel gave the committee an overview of current facilities and equipment and educated its members on how the county's emergency response people are organized.

The county is already slipping behind in facilities as it struggles to keep up with growth, Krakeel said.

“Current facilities aren't even adequate for your current population,” he said.

Part of the difficulty in planning future facilities, Krakeel said, is guessing where the city limits of Fayette's cities will be in the future, as cities annex more and more unincorporated property. Officials try to place new facilities for maximum coverage of the unincorporated areas, but that's a moving target, he said.

“Fifteen years from now, I can't tell you where the city limits of Fayetteville are going to be,” he said.

Annexation also shrinks the available funds. The county collects taxes for fire services only in the areas outside Fayetteville and Peachtree City, and as those areas shrink, so do the taxes.

Plans are in place to build four new fire stations in the next two years, he reported, but those stations will merely replace current, antiquated facilities. Over the next ten to 20 years, the county will need four additional stations as well, he said, at a cost of about $3 million each.

Call volume over the next ten years is expected to grow 40 percent, and the department goal is to maintain an average response time of five minutes, he said.

If proposals for an industrial park in Tyrone go through, Krakeel added, the county will need an aerial platform to provide adequate fire protection. Fayette's firefighters cover the unincorporated areas of the county, plus Tyrone, Brooks and Woolsey.

Currently, the county doesn't have any major industrial areas to cover, but one is under discussion in the Tyrone area.

Ordinary pumper trucks cost around $200,000, but aerial trucks cost $600,000, he said. “That's a major capital expenditure,” he added.

Krakeel's department also is responsible for emergency management throughout Fayette County, and its emergency operations center is currently in a second-story office in the County Administrative Complex. Eventually, the EOC needs to be moved to a new underground facility as part of a command center for the department, he said.

Property tax funding is not adequate to meet those kinds of needs, Krakeel told the committee.

“It took us eight years just to collect enough funds from reserves to build Brooks station,” he said. That station was completed in December 1998 and will provide the model for all future stations, he said.

If the county chooses to enact impact fees, developers will be charged a proportionate share of the costs of the kinds of facilities and equipment Krakeel outlined. The impact fee committee's challenge is to figure out how much each new home or business adds to those costs, and set up fees that will cover those costs.

The idea is to reduce the tax burden on existing residents and businesses, shifting the costs of new roads, recreation facilities and other projects to those moving in.

The group will study the information Krakeel provided and try to come up with a formula that will translate into dollars charged per home or business. Then the figures have to be explained so that the state Department of Community Affairs, which oversees impact fees, will approve the charges.

“We can figure it out,” said committee member Steve Kiser. “It's just... can we justify it?”

And as the group noodles out fees to charge for fire and emergency services, it will be going through the same process for other categories of county service.

Under the law, impact fees can be charged to pay for water treatment and supply; wastewater treatment; roads, streets and bridges; storm water systems; parks, open space and recreation areas; public safety facilities, and libraries.

“The needs are many,” said committee Chairman Bob Todd.