Opinion ID: 1119655
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the four disputed fees

Text: ¶ 14 Home Builders challenges four development fees: (1) a water connection fee, (2) a sewer connection fee, (3) a road impact fee, and (4) a park impact fee. With respect to the water connection fee and the sewer connection fee, Home Builders cites no evidence in the body of its brief showing that either fee was in fact unreasonable. [4] Home Builders does not articulate which Banberry factors were ignored; nor does it explain how the reasonableness of either fee was affected by the failure to treat any particular factor. North Logan, on the other hand, has demonstrated that it carefully considered numerous factors designed to balance capital costs between existing users and new developments. In fact, the evidence North Logan introduced indicated that its calculations for assessing the costs of new development would have justified higher fees than those charged. The record reveals that Home Builders did not rebut this assertion, nor did it articulate an alternative basis for calculating the fees. ¶ 15 With respect to the park impact fee, the record discloses that the fee was based on explicit consideration of the Banberry factors. Home Builders fails to identify which, if any, Banberry factors were ignored, and fails to explain how the reasonableness of the park impact fee was affected by the failure to treat any particular factor. ¶ 16 Home Builders nevertheless argues that there are disputed issues of material fact concerning the park impact fee. First, Home Builders maintains that North Logan should have used a different valuation method for determining the initial residential unit service level upon which the fee level was based. However, Home Builders simply presents this contention as a bald assertion, without articulating why the City's valuation method is unreasonable according to the criteria set forth by Banberry. Given Banberry 's presumption that municipal decisions are valid, Home Builders has not met its burden of showing that the City's park facilities valuation method is unreasonable. ¶ 17 Home Builders also asserts that North Logan's decision to impose the park fee upon new residential development but not on new commercial development was an inequitable distribution of costs. In assessing the park impact fee, the City presumed that residential growth placed the primary burden upon park facilities and did not assess similar impact fees on commercial establishments. The district court found nothing in Banberry forbidding this type of distinction  so long as there was a reasonable basis for presuming that one type of development created burdens that another did not. We agree. Moreover, in the face of the City's evidence that it substantially discounted the park fee below the existing per unit service level, Home Builders offered no evidence of the degree to which the commercial exemption (even assuming the exemption was improper) would offset the discount. Home Builders thus failed to offer any affirmative evidence that the fee charged was actually an unreasonable and inequitable burden upon new residential development. ¶ 18 Home Builders' final contention concerning the park impact fee is that North Logan employed a master plan designed to increase the overall acreage of municipal park facilities in a manner that unfairly required new developments to pay for improvements that would primarily benefit existing residents. With respect to this particular concern, Banberry treated park impact fees as a distinct category from water or sewer connection fees because [t]he central facilities that support water and sewer service[s] would generally confer the same benefits in every part of the municipality, but the benefits conferred by recreational, flood control, or other dispersed resources may be measurably different in different parts of the municipality. 631 P.2d at 905. Nevertheless, Home Builders points to no evidence that indicates how existing residents would be unfairly benefitted at the cost of new development. [5] Although there is some dispute over the precise mechanism that would be employed to fairly distribute costs of the increased service level between existing residents and new development, Home Builders did not demonstrate what Banberry substantively required or how those requirements would vary from the fee actually imposed by North Logan. ¶ 19 Finally, we turn to Home Builders' challenge of the road impact fee. In determining the amount of the road impact fee, North Logan commissioned a study by an independent agency, Rosenthal and Associates. That agency concluded that North Logan had a road capacity surplus, meaning that planned improvements to roads were needed only to service new development. If this conclusion was correct, Banberry 's requirements could not even come into play because Banberry was only concerned with fees allocated to the improvement of existing capital facilities in excess of the direct costs occasioned by new development. 631 P.2d at 903. Rosenthal recommended an impact fee of $1446 per residential unit. This fee would be entirely devoted to new road construction. No part of the fee was to be allocated to improvement of existing roads. Nonetheless, the City imposed a fee of only $1000, so as not to unduly burden or discourage new developments. In effect, new development would bear only seventy percent of its equitable share of the capital costs in relation to benefits conferred. Id. Home Builders offered no evidence that a reasonable fee would have been less than the Rosenthal recommendation, let alone evidence showing that the lower impact fee actually charged was unreasonable. [6]