After approving an amendment to its capital facilities plan last October, the Grantsville City Council voted Wednesday to increase the city’s sewer and culinary water impact fees.
The single-family residential water impact fee increased from $2,244 to $2,545. The sewer impact fee for a single-family home would increase as well, from $1,916 to $3,257. Both increases are for new construction only.
The city amended its capital facilities plan to meet the financial demands of replacing the city’s water and sewer infrastructure and funding growth-related capital projects.
When the city’s Main Street is reconstructed, currently slated for 2019, the city intends to replace the sewer and water lines running under the street.
The water main replacement project, expected to cost at least $3.5 million, is one of a number of upcoming projects the city is looking at in the future. The capital facilities plan factors in anticipated infrastructure projects in the next 20 years and the proportion of cost attributed to growth and new development.
A percentage of the cost of new water and sewer development in the city can be covered by impact fees, based on how much of the project is caused by growth. The cost of the project covered by impact fees varies from a low of 11 percent to as high as 89 percent.
Councilman Tom Tripp said he didn’t believe the new impact fees will go far enough to factor in the impact of additional users on the quality of the water service provided, including factors like water pressure.
“We can keep adding people and people and have water to get to their house, but I think we have to have a quality of water pressure when we get there,” Tripp said.
Tripp recommended the city continue to review the impact fee rates and perhaps call in an additional engineering firm to evaluate the capital facilities plan from Aqua Engineering.
Councilman Mike Colson agreed with Tripp on a second review of the plan and included a future review of impact fee collection in his motion.
The city council unanimously approved the increase in water and sewer impact fees in the subsequent vote.