Albemarle County is considering a significant increase on the cost of development, Brian McNeill wrote in the Progress yesterday. For example, right now they charge $720 to review a preliminary plat submitted by a developer. But a study of their own staff time has found that the real cost of that time is much higher, and so now they intend to charge $4,100 for the same procedure. The county went to the Planning Commission to get approval to raise those rates, hoping to cover 50% the costs incurred by developers, but the Planning Commission ended up approving covering 75% of those costs via fees, with the rest being made up by you and me in the form of taxes. Jay Willer, of the Blue Ridge Home Builders, complains to the Progress that developers shouldn’t have to pay for those costs, but that the rest of us should bear that cost on their behalf, which is rather the opposite of the libertarian stance generally taken by developers.
The Planning Commission only approved these increases by a one-vote margin. Now the matter goes before the Board of Supervisors.
Raising fees is a good way to see to it that well-heeled developers will develop for the well-heeled. Supposedly it costs $16,000 for a sewer hook up, but they have approved charging around $6000 for now (up from around $1500). Waldo, you’d better move now on building your house. If they really raise the costs people won’t have to worry about the water supply.
That is a significant catch of the whole thing. Presumably the county will continue to make reductions in fees for developers who construct affordable housing. If anything, this might provide an even better incentive to do so.
I am curious about whether this will affect regular Joes building a single home to live in. It certainly sounds like it’s designed not to, but I don’t know what the “developer” threshold is.
“If approved by the Board of Supervisors, the county would impose new fees and raise existing fees for nearly all applications, permits, reviews and inspections of new subdivision developments.” The county uses the term “subdivision” even when it is considering subdividing a 4 acre lot into two two-acre lots. The way I interpreted the article, the $720 to $4100 Planning Commission preliminary plat review charge was just an example of how the charges may increase(?). I cannot believe that the developers of Biscuit Run would not be required to pay tens of thousands of dollars to the county for the reviews of the entire project. Neighborhood model reviews are far more detailed than say the review decades ago of the Woodbrook subdivion.