By Moses Leos III
A study meant to determine whether Kyle’s development fees are too high may have found the opposite, according to city officials.
For Mayor Todd Webster, the revelation that Kyle’s development fees are lower than cities surveyed in their study corroborated what officials theorized.
“It confirms what we knew,” Webster said on the dais during the July 7 meeting. “I heard for decades that we have outrageous fees. That’s one of those things, where if you hear something enough, you believe it.”
The study, compiled by the city’s Planning Department, was presented to city council in early July.
After Webster and City Manager Scott Sellers compared “anecdotal evidence” of developer complaints, they conceptualize the study.
Howard Koontz, Director of Planning, said developers thought Kyle’s fees are higher [than other cities] and that the city isn’t as friendly or attractive to do business [in].
“We didn’t want that attitude or opinion to become the pervasive thought for developers, especially if we found out it’s not true,” Koontz said.
In addition, the city hadn’t completed a development fees study in three years – though Koontz said that isn’t unusual.
The recent study compared Kyle to other cities across eight different criteria, ranging across three development examples.
According to Koontz, “The results show Kyle was below the average of the cities we looked at.”
The comparisons were performed in five different categories, with three of those only having a nominal deviation.
Koontz said Kyle was ahead of other cities on its transportation impact fee, or the perimeter road fee. He said the reason for that is Kyle is one of the few municipalities that apply an impact fee on a consistent basis.
But he said the impact fee is not assessed uniformly across cities. Kyle’s perimeter road fee calls for developers to pay 50 percent of reconstruction cost of the adjacent road.
While he said transportation impact fees are necessary, they aren’t a profit center.
Koontz theorized a possible change, where impact fees are determined on the impact a development has to the infrastructure component in question.
Trips per day on certain roads near development could be a possible option.
According to Koontz, the benefit is developers paying for infrastructure they use.
But meeting the growth of the city is the primary goal for Kyle. Spokesperson Jerry Hendrix said the city’s current fee structure isn’t suited to help the city meet growth.
While Kyle may opt to raise development fees in the future, Koontz said it will be as fair as possible.
“I understand (a developers) goal is to maximize their return on investment for each development project they undertake,” he said. “That is not the goal of the City of Kyle. We want to be responsive to our residents and our stakeholders.”
