The Enumclaw City Council recently approved a new ordinance that will likely soon lead to increased impact fees for developers.
Elected officials approved the ordinance, which accepted an October 2024 transportation impact fee study and a parks impact fee study from May of this year, during the Oct. 27 meeting.
Accepting the studies paves the way for the council to increase the impact fees via resolution later this year.
Impact fees are one-time fees paid for by developers who build housing units inside city limits, and are used specifically to address the areas in a city new development would affect, like streets and sidewalks, parks, and schools.
The two studies recommended increasing the city’s parks and impact fees.
The transportation study also recommended implementing a 5% discount on “cost of trips,” which is used to calculate the final impact fee amount, but the city’s planning commission recommends the city not adopt this discount.
“… [T]he discount would disproportionately require the costs for infrastructure to be made from general taxes from the city,” the resolution’s agenda bill reads. “Growth paying for growth would be for paying for the full amount.”
Currently, the impact fees for transportation and parks for a single family home is $3,239 and $1,209 respectively.
The city’s Community and Economic Development committee (CED) recommended that Enumclaw would raise the transportation impact fee to $4,004, and the park fee to $2,294.
And the Enumclaw Planning commission went even higher, with a transportation impact fee of $4,491 and a park impact fee of $2,294.
“… [T]he city has done a good job keeping our impact fees reasonable,” city Community Development Direcotr Chirs Pasinneti said. “In relation to other cities, we are about the mid-point between the most expensive and least.”
If revenues come in as expected, the increased impact fees would result in an additional $100,000 making its way from developers into city coffers, according to Pasinetti; that would be a total of $330,000 for transportation projects and $180,000 for parks.
The increased transportation impact fee revenue could be used for projects like constructing a sidewalk from McHugh Avenue to Thunder Mountain Middle School or installing a signal or roundabout at SR 169 and Kibler Avenue, among a few dozen others.
From filling sidewalk gaps to major construction projects, Enumclaw has a total of nearly $102 million of expected costs in various transportation improvements — roughly only $27.5 million of those improvements can be covered by transportation impact fees (although the city often seeks supplemental grant funds, as Enumclaw doesn’t have the budget to tackle most of these projects from its general fund).
Parks are much a simpler situation.
There are five transportation-fee eligible projects on the books, including constructing a playground and basketball court at Elk Meadows, acquire land for a future Big West park, and improve Mahler park with a bridge, interpretive signs, and trail maintenance.
The current total expected cost for these projects is about $1.5 million.
All cost estimates come with the caveat that they’re expected to rise in the years to come, which is one of the reasons why Enumclaw is increasing its impact fees now.
