Developers protest impact fees at City Council meeting

The Durham City Council discussed how to revamp its street impact fees and decided on the structure of a citizens' committee to help redraw the city's ward lines at a meeting last night. During the nearly four-hour meeting, the council heard comments from about 20 citizens on the city's proposal to raise street impact fees, which are designed to charge new developments for the wear and tear that their tenants create on Durham roads.

Durham's administrative staff had designed the basics of a plan that would increase the impact fees to 30 percent of the maximum allowable level by July 1 of this year. But many of the citizens who spoke, mostly business representatives, said the plan would cause too steep an increase, driving away potential developers to neighboring counties and hurting Durham's property tax base.

"If one building goes to another county because of these increased fees, that's a tenfold difference," said Anne Stoddard, legislative affairs chair for the Triangle chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties. Stoddard, supported by about two dozen other NAIOP members, proposed an alternative plan to triple the current impact fees over five years while providing more reimbursements for developers.

Affordable-housing activists cautioned that charging developers higher fees would raise rent for their eventual tenants. "As we consider the various impacts of development fees that are already on the books or are being proposed, we need to consider their impact on affordable-housing development," Rich Lee, director of the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition, said.

But one citizen spoke in favor of the plan. "I know that the taxpayers have to pick up the bill for these roads if it's not done at development," Durham resident Steve Bocckino said.

The council referred the plan back for further work and discussion. Most members agreed that money would need to come from somewhere, but said the question was where. "Everybody wants good, fair impact fees," said council member Lewis Cheek. "The question is, what does that mean?"

IN OTHER BUSINESS: The council, by a 10-2 vote, approved a plan to appoint two co-chairs to a citizens' committee charged with advising the council on how to redraw the boundaries to consolidate Durham's six wards into three. Mayor Nick Tennyson's original plan called for Lavonia Allison, chair of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, and Patrick Byker, chair of the conservative Friends of Durham, to chair the committee jointly. At the meeting, Byker accepted the position, but Allison declined the request due to lack of time. The motion was amended to authorize the mayor, with Allison's advice, to appoint a different co-chair.

The council also passed a resolution honoring the late Richard Watson, a professor emeritus of history at Duke and the founder of St. Philip's Community Kitchen.