HAYDEN - Building in Hayden is getting tougher every year, according to Mike Ragusa.

"It's the fees that they impose to build a new home," explained the owner of Termac Construction, Inc.

City fees for constructing his company's typical 2,000-square-foot home used to total roughly $7,200 in 2000, he said.

Last year, charges for the same size structure hit just below $19,000.

The rocketing costs are choking his business, he said.

"When $8,000 hits in your bottom line, that can take 50 to 75 percent of your gross profit," he said. "And add the economy we have to that."

Fees are only $9,000 to cobble the same home in Coeur d'Alene, Ragusa added.

"There's such a disparity between the cities," he said. "My question is, why?"

The nonprofit North Idaho Building Contractors Association has fielded complaints for years about Hayden's steep fees for building new homes, said President Rod Underhill.

Paying more to build a house, Underhill said, means selling it for more to compensate.

"Every dollar you start putting on a house, by the time it gets to the consumer, it's several times that dollar," he said. "They (builders) can't sell their houses for fair market value if they're paying $10,000 over the estimates at other cities."

He's worried Hayden's housing market could end up hurting as a result, he said.

"They (builders) will go to other cities to build, if it's $10,000 cheaper," Underhill said, adding that the nonprofit will be meeting with Hayden about these concerns. "Hayden is one of the highest, if not the highest, priced building departments and impact fees in the state."

It's true, said Stefan Chatwin, Hayden city administrator.

"Yes, we're a little higher than most other cities," he said.

That's a result of Hayden's exploding population over the past 20 years, he said.

New residents create extra demands on city services, he explained, and the city must adopt higher impact fees to meet that demand.

"Absolutely, as you have lots of growth and as the city grows, the impact fees and the sewer cap fees have a substantial increase. We have to do that, in order to maintain the same level of service," Chatwin said. "I don't know how else you could do it, without raising everybody's property tax rate significantly."

Hayden's total fees are about $18,181 for constructing a new single family home, he said.

Higher, he acknowledged, than the roughly total $15,784 fees for the same home in Rathdrum, $13,129 in Post Falls or $8,795 in Coeur d'Alene.

"Why the big difference? That's the question everybody asks," Chatwin said. "It's really comparing apples to oranges."

A big chunk of the gap is Hayden's $8,795 sewer cap fee per new residential unit, Chatwin explained, which eclipses the $2,788 cap fee in Coeur d'Alene and $5,693 charge in Post Falls.

It's higher because of the different water treatment facilities the cities use, Chatwin said.

"There are so many kinds of wastewater facilities out there. A lot of times it's the age of it," he said of what drives cap fees. "We have to say, 'This is the accurate fee that truly reflects the effect this new house will have on our system.'"

Most of Hayden's impact fees, which can only fund improvements or new materials to accommodate new growth, are the highest in Kootenai County, as well.

The city's park impact fee is $2,928 per residential unit, for instance, compared to Post Fall's fee of $2,166 per unit, or $755 per unit in Coeur d'Alene.

Hayden's fee for new roads is $2,429 per unit, he added, over the $1,872 fee in Rathdrum or $875 in Coeur d'Alene.

That's because Hayden has more population growth to accommodate than the other cities, Chatwin said.

"You have all this new development," he said, pointing out the impacts like additional traffic. "Who's going to pay for it? The couple who have been living here for 30 years? You need to say, 'Developers, this is your business, you're doing this, you pay for it.'"

Hayden's population escalated from 3,744 to 9,159 between 1990 and 2000, Chatwin said.

By 2010, he added, the population was pushing 14,000.

"It's more than doubled, then tripled, the amount of the population," he said.

Hayden builders usually understand the steeper fees once the need is explained, Chatwin added.

"I've yet to see a builder come in and say, 'They (fees) are so expensive, I have to go somewhere else to do construction,'" he said.

But Todd Stam said that was the case with his company, Aspen Homes.

"It's been a huge deterrent for us to do projects in Hayden, just due to that (fee) number," Stam said.

His company has changed the focus of its construction from Hayden to Post Falls, Coeur d'Alene and Liberty Lake, he said, where the fee package doesn't usually exceed $10,000.

"The minute we go to Hayden, it's $19,000, and the problem is our buyers can't see the value of that," Stam said. "It's not like I'm giving them $10,000 more house."

Ed Wagner, building official with Coeur d'Alene, said total fees for new homes in the city have remained between $7,000 and $9,000 over the past decade.

"We've determined we don't want to raise them (fees) unless we have to," Wagner said. "We've been looking for some time in the future to raise fees, because of our cost of inspections and time in the field. We're low right now, so we'll keep them where they are."

The city will be re-evaluating its impact fees for next year, he added.

Spokespeople for the Post Falls Building Department could not be reached.

Hayden's $75 building permit for homes is about the same as other cities.

Builders just need to work around higher fees, Chatwin said.

"Does it determine cuts in their costs a bit? I guess it might, but they're in the business of building houses. That's not my business," he said. "It's up to them if it's going to pencil or not. Our fees are not extraordinary."