Discuss: Can You Get Around Enumclaw's Transportation Impact Fees?

Transportation impact fees, which are charged to a property owner when initial building permits are processed, help to mitigate impact on city roads and infrastructure due to anticipated increases in usage during peak hours due to whatever that building will be in the future.

According to Community Development Director Erika Shook, those fees are only charged at that time, and at no other subsequent time.

Discuss: If a business owner's initial building permit designated a certain building section for storage but they later changed it to be office space, used by employees with vehicles, should the city collect additional impact fees due to the anticipated change?

"Impact fees wouldn’t be charged after the initial building permit," Shook told the City Council Monday night as it weighed a request by the Helac Corporation to reduce the city's calculated impact fees for a new 17,000-square-foot addition from about $78,000 to about $11,000, which was the number provided by an independent fee consultant.

The requested reduction was not the issue - city code allows for a fee payer to submit its own fee calculation to better reflect the specific characteristics of a given building and its use, Shook said.

The issue for Councilmembers Darrel Dickson and Chance LaFleur - and Kyle Diercks to an extent - was why Helac's figure was based on just 8,000 square feet rather than the full 17,000-square-foot building.

Shook explained that of the entire 17,000 square feet, only 8,000 square feet of area is technically being added; the remaining square footage covers an existing outdoor storage area that would be brought indoors.

The possibility the area wouldn't alway remain storage concerned the city leaders. LaFleur opposed the new fee calculation, and though Dickson and Diercks approved it, they called for a larger discussion about impact fee policy and closing such a loophole.