The Post Falls Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously this week to recommend an impact fee increase to the City Council.

The recommendation would be to raise impact fees to support public safety and parks and recreation, with the caveat that city staff must investigate how to increase impact fees for multi-modal uses and transportation at a lower rate than what has been presented previously by a consulting firm.

The interim update was presented in November by TischlerBise, a consulting firm hired to review the city's impact fees to reflect cost changes in all infrastructure categories. TischlerBise prepared an impact fee study for the city based on the period from late 2018 through early 2021. The city has annually updated the impact fee schedule using a construction cost index. TishlerBise recommended the fees be adjusted based on the results of the study.

The proposed impact fee schedule sees increases across the board of about 70%. For example, the current impact fee for a multi-family development is $5,207. With the increase, the new fee would be $8,910.

"I don’t want to see developers not come here because their impact fees are becoming so huge, but I know we need them, and our homeowners are demanding (them)," Commissioner Vicky Jo Carey said. “We got to get a middle ground here."

Impact fees are one-time fees established for growth to pay for itself. They can only be used for capital improvements, not maintenance, staffing or city expenses of that nature.

Post Falls Police Chief Greg McLean said those funds help pay for support at the police station, ancillary facilities and communication facilities, including tower sites that allow the police to communicate with officers and different agencies. In 2021, the city conducted a facility assessment on all the buildings in the city to see what would be needed in the future. The assessment found the police department to be in need of expansion because of the increased growth the city has seen and increased calls for service the police have received as the population has boomed.

“We have seen 26.6% increase in calls for service since 2018, which means that we have put more officers on the start to cover those calls," McLean said. "We basically have run out of space in our current PD."

Commissioners were not comfortable with data regarding streets development and multi-modal infrastructure costs, thus asking to seek alternatives to high prices indicated in the TischlerBise report.

"I think we have to be careful about finding that balance between protecting, making development pay for development and making sure that development doesn’t overpay,” Planning and Zoning vice chair Ray Kimball said. "The reality is that these dollars just get passed on to the person buying a house or renting an apartment, which means our residents and our future residents and our children and people who are growing up here are going to pay the price for that. It comes out of the developer's pocket, and it seems like, 'Oh that’s easy, comes out of the developer's pocket,' but really it just gets passed on."

The impact fee discussion is scheduled as a workshop with the Post Falls City Council at 5 p.m. Tuesday with a public hearing planned for Feb. 21.