City Councilman Jon Camp wants to freeze the city's impact fee rates where they are rather than make the annual inflationary adjustment to them.
Posted: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 6:00 pm
City Councilman Jon Camp wants to freeze the city’s impact fee rates where they are rather than make the annual inflationary adjustment to them.
His resolution would not adjust the rates until next January.
The city began collecting impact fees on new developments and expansions in 2003 to offset about half the cost of providing infrastructure, such as water and sewer service, parks and trails and roads necessary to, for example, a new housing development. The Home Builders Association of Lincoln unsuccessfully challenged the legality of impact fees in court.
Freezing impact fee rates would save a homeowner who installs a ¾-inch water main about $94 this year, for example.
Mayoral aide Rick Hoppe said the mayor is willing to consider Camp’s proposal if it’s for one year only.
“Elimination of future increases would hinder the city’s ability to work with developers to create future growth opportunities,” Hoppe said. “In the end, the mayor believes any impact fee needs to address the central question of Lincoln’s future: How do we find the money to build the infrastructure that creates growth and drives Lincoln’s economy?”
Hy-Vee slapped
A normally routine liquor license reapplication just scraped by the City Council on Monday.
Hy-Vee Inc. applied to expand its licensed premises just east of 70th and Pioneers by building an addition on the west side of the grocery store. Liquor license holders must reapply when they build additions or change the premises.
But Councilman Doug Emery took the opportunity to make a statement about Hy-Vee’s actions at another of its Lincoln locations: Hy-Vee is building a new store at 84th and Holdrege streets, and after that store opens, tentatively in March, the Hy-Vee at 48th and Leighton, will close.
That will leave people in the University Place Neighborhood without a grocery store because, Emery said, Hy-Vee will not lease the location to another grocery store, at least through 2013. So, he voted against Hy-Vee’s liquor license to show solidarity with his constituents in University Place, where he said a lot of people aren’t as mobile as in other areas.
He said he opposes Hy-Vee’s attempt to “legislate lack of competition,” especially considering Hy-Vee will get tax increment financing from the city for another new store at 50th and O streets.
And in another show of solidarity, Councilmen Jonathan Cook and John Spatz were persuaded by Emery’s speech to vote “no,” too.
“It is going to put them in a bad position to not have a grocery store for many years,” Spatz said Tuesday. He used to live right next door to the 48th and Leighton Hy-Vee.
Hy-Vee spokeswoman Chris Friesleben did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Welcome to the jungle. Now, about those snowplows.
Three weeks after beginning his job as head of the city’s public works department, Greg MacLean got a pop quiz Monday on how well he knows the city’s snow removal policy.
During an informal council meeting on Monday, Councilman Camp questioned the city’s policy of not plowing residential streets unless more than 4 inches of snow falls or high winds cause drifting. He said he only recently learned of the policy.
MacLean said the city plows arterial streets and emergency routes first, but by the time 4 inches falls on residential streets, the snow is often already packed down. The city also spreads sand on icy streets by request.
Mayor Chris Beutler said he’s open to re-examining the policy.
“If you want to change something, let’s talk about it,” he told Camp.
He said it
“You really do need a roomful of monks and an abacus to figure this stuff out.” — Police Chief Tom Casady, on a recent two-page flier from the state Motor Vehicles Department on changes regarding provisional driver’s permits — just one example of the many codes, laws and law changes police officers are expected to master.
Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.