Opinion ID: 1202187
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Impact Fee

Text: TAB contends, however, that this fee is a specific type of financing mechanism an impact feewhich requires specific legislative authority. TAB reasons that if the exercise of the police power includes the ability to impose impact fees, there would have been no need for the legislature to enact the road impact fee statutes as provided for by § 15.1-498.1 et seq. Assuming that this proposition is correct, TAB's argument that this fee is an impact fee is unpersuasive. TAB does not provide a definition of impact fee, but the elements of an impact fee are contained in Code § 15.1-498.2 which defines an impact fee as a charge or assessment imposed against new development in order to generate revenue to fund or recover the costs of reasonable road improvements necessitated by and attributable to such new development[s]. [3] Yet throughout its arguments, TAB contends that those paying the fee did not generate the need for the facilities. Specifically, TAB posits that, although the fees have been in effect for over four and a half years, the project for which [the fee payers] have been required to pay a premium has not been provided, and is not even under construction. Thus, TAB argues that the passage of time between collection of an impact fee and payment of the cost that [the] impact fee is designed to defray belies the proposition that the need for the facilities to be paid from the fee was generated by those required to pay the impact fee. Under TAB's own theory then, the fee does not meet the definition of impact fee as characterized by § 15.1-498.2. We reject TAB's characterization of the fee as an impact fee, not only because of the inconsistencies in TAB's position, see Ring v. Poelman, 240 Va. 323, 397 S.E.2d 824 (1990), but also, as discussed below, because it is a proprietary fee and those who are paying the fee are receiving a present, particularized benefit. Having determined that the City was vested with the authority to finance the project, we now consider the remainder of TAB's complaints.