In a unanimous vote, the Standish Town Council gave initial approval to an amendment to the town’s impact fee ordinance on Tuesday, Jan. 14. A second vote is required for the amendment to take effect.

The amendment would update Standish Town Code Chapter 181: Land Use Article 21, which has not been updated since 1996. In the wake of rapid new development over the following decades, the town has sought to find more flexible ways to impose impact fees on incoming businesses and properties in order to compensate for the impact of the development. These fees are added onto the cost of a building permit, and used to pay for expanded needs within the town based on new development.

Town Manager Brandon Watson told the Lakes Region Weekly that Standish currently has one impact fee, which covers road development. The desired effect of this fee, he said, is to alleviate some of burden for current residents in terms of infrastructure costs. Watson also stressed that the new impact fees will have zero effect on current residents besides not putting all of the current tax burden onto their shoulders.

The new ordinance would create two new impact fees. In addition to the existing fee, which is focused on improving Standish’s road system, the new fees would respectively go toward developing new recreational lands and facilities while expanding existing ones, and expanding the town’s public safety services. The proposed public safety impact fee would be $4,039 per dwelling; the recreation and open space impact fee would be $2,342. At the meeting, Town Planner Zach Mosher said that he expected the town’s exact priorities to change year to year according to the capital plan.

These changes are driven by Standish’s rapidly growing population, and the need to change the town’s infrastructure to accommodate them, according to town officials.

The new impact fee ordinance changes come after a failed attempt to address the issue through a construction moratorium. In November, the council narrowly voted against a moratorium that would have blocked the construction of new large-scale housing developments for 180 days, in order to give the town time to implement the necessary amendments. Speaking to the Lakes Region Weekly, Watson said, although there was plenty of grassroots support for the moratorium, since it failed on its initial attempt to pass, the council is unable to hear it again until a year has passed since the initial vote.

Mosher said while the formula for calculating impact fees would remain the same for the original fee, the amount of money in the capital plan would change to reflect the updated ordinance. The original road impact fee is calculated by subtracting the current traffic count from the total traffic estimate, and multiplying that by the total improvement cost. Meanwhile, the new fees will be calculated by adding development costs together, dividing that by potential population growth, and multiplying the result by the average household size.

The proposed fees will be charged at the time of pulling a building permit.

Council member Philip Pomerleau noted how much the town had changed in the 28 years since the fee was last updated, particularly in terms of the cost of running the aforementioned departments, and was thankful the town was taking action on the impact fee issue.

“I’m glad that this council brought it upon themselves to bring this forward and move ahead,” said Pomerleau.