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HEARING - Chief Administrative Office recommending the Board consider a request from the Lake Valley Fire Protection District to adopt and authorize the Chair to sign Resolution 089-2026, approving the updated Fire Impact Fee Nexus Study and increasing development impact mitigation fees.
FUNDING: Development Impact Fees.
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DISCUSSION / BACKGROUND
The California Mitigation Fee Act (Gov. Code §66000 et seq.) (the “Act”) authorizes local agencies to establish fees that offset the impacts of new development on public facilities, helping ensure service levels are maintained as communities grow. Because individual Special Districts do not have independent authority to impose these fees, the County implements and collects them on each district’s behalf. In accordance with the Act, fee revenues are deposited into separate, dedicated accounts for each district.
The District engaged Ridgeline Municipal Strategies, LLC to prepare a Fire Impact Fee Nexus Study. The study provides the legal and analytical basis for calculating and applying an updated fee to new development within the District. It evaluates the current fee program, considers recent and projected development, assesses how this growth affects District facilities, and documents the need for fee adjustments due to new development, inflation, and rising facility costs. The study identifies the public facilities needed to accommodate expected growth through 2045.
Fire impact fees support one-time public facility costs attributable to new development, enabling the District to serve additional demand while maintaining its existing level of service.
The District’s Fire Impact Fee Program was last updated on April 24, 2018, when the County adopted Resolution 064-2018 approving the 2015 Lake Valley Fire Protection District Fire Impact Fee Nexus Study. No inflationary adjustments have been applied since that time. As a result, the fee increase recommended in the new study is larger than typical. In addition...
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