SDC fees may be doubled in Crook County

Published 5:00 am Wednesday, May 11, 2005

The Crook County Parks and Recreation District is considering a proposal tonight to more than double the fees developers pay for added infrastructure related to growth.

The fee hike would allow the parks and recreation district to collect the full amount of what it could have been charging since the fees were first established.

The parks and recreation district board will hold a meeting today at 5:15 p.m. at the Juniper Art Guild to discuss a proposal to raise its system development charges, known as an SDCs. Developers are charged SDCs for new homes to pay for capital improvements and expansions to water, wastewater, transportation, park and sewer facilities required by a growing population.

The parks and recreation district is considering raising its SDC fees from $446 to $1,183 for a single-family home or duplex; from $302 to $802 for a multi-family home or apartment building; and from $379 to $1,005 for a manufactured home in a mobile home park.

If the board approves the fees tonight, the new rates could go into effect within 30 days. The money would be used to build additional parks and add new facilities, but not to build a new pool, said parks and recreation district Director Maureen Crawford.

When the parks and recreation district first adopted SDC fees in 1994, it should have charged $561 for a single-family home, $380 for a multi-family home and $476 for a mobile home, according to rates determined by Don Ganer, who owns a consulting firm that created the district’s SDC fee methodology.

The district did not initially adopt the full amount and decided to phase in the fees, Crawford said.

But the district had no way of collecting SDC fees until 2001 when the Crook County Building Department starting charging developers on the district’s behalf.

By then, the parks and recreation district had updated its SDC fees. Ganer had recalculated the rates in 2000 to the amounts the district wants to start charging now. At the time, he based the SDC rates on a projected yearly growth rate of 1.96 percent and an estimated $1.4 million cost to build new parks and update facilities.

Even then, the district did not charge the full SDC rate, Crawford said. It’s unclear why the district did not implement the full rate at the time.

”Being that we never did adopt what the methodology report says, we have been collecting way low,” Crawford said. ”If they are not adopted, we would not be able to provide for the growth that is happening.

Crook County was rated the second fastest-county in Oregon between 2000 and 2004, with a growth rate of 11.7 percent, according to figures from the U.S. Census.

But the imminent jump in SDC fees has caught developers by surprise. It has led some like Bend-based developer Dennis Pahlisch, who is building a 400-home planned unit neighborhood north of downtown Prineville, to wonder why he wasn’t given a heads-up.

Pahlisch said he is not against the idea of SDC fees going up, but he wanted to be kept in the loop.

The parks and recreation district is not required to notify developers of upcoming rate hikes unless they request it, according to state law.

”We support parks but I want to support a partnership with the parks district where we know of a something and know of their thoughts so we can help provide a solution,” said Pahlisch, whose neighborhood will be called Ochoco Point.

If he had known the fees were on the rise, for example, he said he would have considered building a public park in Ochoco Point instead of dedicating all 15 acres of open space to facilities for the residents.

”I think they saw we were going to start pulling permits and saw the opportunity to collect the fees,” said Pahlisch, who plans to start selling homes in July. ”Now there is going to be some volume to get the fees.”

Ultimately, he said the cost would get passed on to new homeowners.

Parks and recreation district board member Todd Severson said the board has periodically discussed the issue of raising SDC fees since he became a member two years ago. It finally came time to act, he said.

”I don’t want anyone to think that I tried to backdoor this for raising taxes for the county or the developer,” Severson said.

Severson said the board was trying to be proactive.

”Now that the county is growing so fast, we want to provide better parks and facilities,” Severson said. ”The (new) people should probably help pay for the growth since the growth is being caused by them.”

Kirk Schueler, the president of Bend-based Brooks Resources, which is building a 2,000- to 3,000-unit mixed-use community adjacent to Ochoco Point, said he supports SDC rates being adjusted to pay for needed facilities.

But Schueler said he wished the parks and recreation district would have implemented the full rate in 2000 when it created a new SDC methodology.

”They should adopt it to keep up with growth and not artificially depress it,” Schueler said. ”Someone did the study and came up with the numbers and then you adopt it a lower rate, why would you do that?”

Schueler also said his company is keeping a close eye on the long-range planning process the parks and recreation district is currently undergoing.

”What is going to happen when they get the (comprehensive) plan updated?” Schueler asked. ”I suspect they will go back and look at the SDC rate. I secretly hope it won’t go up too much.”

As a relatively new parks and recreation board member Robert Towne said he didn’t know the history of the proposal to raise the SDC rate.

But he said the parks district has an aggressive vision for the future and increasing SDC fees is one way to accomplish that.

”The fees, at least from my understanding, are not consistent with what SDC fees are in other jurisdictions,” said Towne, who was appointed to the board in March. ”It’s something we need to look at and part of the process of funding the future and recreation for parks in Crook County.”

Other Central Oregon communities have seen sharp jumps in SDC fees because of growth.

For example, in 2003, the Bend Metro Park and Recreation District raised its SDC fees from $920 to $2,940 for a single-family home and from $660 to $2,638 for a multi-family home, said Finance Director Lindsey Lombard.

The rates are adjusted yearly for inflation and are currently at $3,064 for a single-family home and $2,749 for a multi-family home, she said.

The rates increased when the Bend park and recreation district took over its own SDC fee system from the city of Bend in 1997, said Bruce Ronning, the district’s planning and development director.

At that time, the district saw a need to raise rates to reflect a rising population and increased land and business costs, Ronning said.

Ernestine Bousquet can be reached at 541-504-2336 or at ebousquet@bendbulletin.com.