Prospective homebuyers in Carroll County may find up to $1,700 added to the price of a new home now that the county commissioners have increased the impact fee.
The commissioners voted unanimously Friday to increase the fee, but they dropped a proposal to include a controversial water resources charge.
The new impact fee is $4,487 per single-family home, up from $2,700 in most parts of the county. The fee had been $3,500 in the Mount Airy and Sykesville areas because the county charged an additional $800 to pay for the Gillis Falls Reservoir.
Despite his vote to raise the fee, Commissioner Donald I. Dell said, "I still feel this is an unfair fee across the board."
Impact fees are levied on new residential development and are paid once by builders, who generally pass on the cost to homebuyers.
The fees are calculated so that each new housing unit is assessed a share of the costs of expanding schools and parks to accommodate growth.
Of the $4,487 fee, $4,023 is to go toward building schools and $464 is to be used for parks.
Previously, $2,500 per home went to schools and $200 went to parks.
The impact fee, which had not been changed since it was instituted in 1989, has raised about $3 million per year.
Technically, the fee increase took effect Feb. 10, the day the commissioners announced the proposed increase.
The fee designates $201 more for schools per home and $23 more for parks than the increase the commissioners originally proposed. They had proposed an impact fee of $4,755 per home -- $3,822 for schools, $441 for parks and $492 for water resources.
Tischler & Associates Inc., a Bethesda consultant, had recommended that Carroll officials charge a water resource fee in all parts of the county to buy land for reservoirs and protect water supplies. In addition to Gillis Falls in South Carroll, the county plans to build a reservoir in the Union Mills area.
County Attorney Charles W. Thompson Jr. said Friday that the county should study the water resource fee further before imposing it. Questions about the fee were raised at a public hearing Feb. 17, he said.
Developers say they consider the water resource fee an illegal special district tax.
Gary B. Blucher of Masonry Contractors Inc. in Manchester said that if the water resource fee is implemented, builders might challenge it in court.
Mr. Thompson said the county could legally defend a water resource fee.
Commissioner W. Benjamin Brown said the county needs to better define how the fee would be applied and how the county would spend the money collected.
Mr. Dell said he had "some serious reservations" about the impact fee but added that the county has "a definite need for revenue immediately."
The county needs to build six schools in the next two years to try to keep up with the growing population.
The impact fee is "grossly unfair" to certain people, Mr. Dell said, because some people live in Carroll and have children in school, yet don't pay an impact fee because they don't buy new homes. Others are county natives who have no children but pay an impact fee, which is applied to school funding, when they build new homes, he said.
Commissioner Richard T. Yates said he would rather not charge Carroll natives an impact fee but that excluding them would be illegal.
Mr. Dell said he would like buyers of new homes to be able to pay the impact fee increase over several years.
Mr. Brown said he would not consider that. "It defeats the purpose of an impact fee, which is to get your money up front," he said.
Mr. Blucher said Friday that builders will have to decide whether to absorb the impact fee increase to keep home prices attractive.
If the increased fee is passed on to buyers, it could price some first-time homebuyers out of the market, said James Piet, president of the Carroll County chapter of the Home Builders Association of Maryland.
The commissioners also approved impact fee increases on new mobile homes; multifamily dwellings such as townhouses and duplexes; and apartments.