Parks panel still looking at fees for developers

FAYETTEVILLE — The parks board wants to use the most accurate information available to calculate the fees developers of new properties pay in place of dedicating land for parks, but also eventually look at the formula itself.

The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on Monday again discussed the city’s park dedication fee ordinance. Board members took up the topic in December and agreed on the residential occupancy rates affecting the fee.

However, the board couldn’t agree on the land value figure used in the formula. Park Planning Superintendent Ted Jack said parks staff is scheduled to review land information with the Washington County Assessor’s Office on Thursday.

“We don’t know for sure what the assessor’s going to be able to provide, but we’re going to try to get it updated as best we can,” he said.

Any developer of 24 or more residential units, whether single- or multifamily, has two options under city code. Either dedicate a portion of the land for a park, or pay a one-time fee instead.

Money from the fee is used to buy land, build amenities and put money down toward grants and partnerships.

The city uses a formula to calculate the fee. It uses the land value per acre, park acres per person and number of people living in a unit.

Right now, the rate is $920 per unit for a single-family development and $560 per unit for multifamily. If a developer builds 25 homes without dedicating a portion of the land for a park, he would owe the city $23,000. A developer building a 100-unit apartment complex with no park land would owe $56,000.

The city uses $40,000 per acre as the land value. The staff recommendation to update the number to $54,462 per acre comes from 2016 and 2017 raw land records, Jack said.

If the board adopts the parks staff recommended changes, the fee for single-family developments would go up from $920 per unit to $1,258 per unit. The multifamily fee would go from $560 to $1,100 per unit.

Looking further ahead, board members expressed a desire to look at how the city calculates the fee in the first place. Other cities, such as Bentonville, have parkland dedication fees wrapped up into impact fees for other services, such as police and fire.

Chairman Richie Lamb said changing the formula for parkland dedication would require a consultant to do a study for all of the city’s impact fees.

Board Member Will Dockery said he supported updating the numbers, but the city needs to take a more modern approach to the parkland dedication formula. The ordinance was crafted in 1981, and the parks board reviews the numbers every two years.

“We need to do this now, and then we also need to change the way it’s done,” Dockery said. “The formula that we are using — it’s nuts that this is the formula that we’re using.”

Dockery, Nicole Claesen and Keith Tencleve had their first meeting as parks board members Monday.

NWA Democrat-Gazette/J.T. WAMPLER Tom Hennelly (right) of Crafton Tull shows the site of the Weir Road subdivision in Fayetteville to parks board members Monday. Developers of the Weir Road subdivision are proposing a park west of a proposed extension of Rupple Road.

NWA Democrat-Gazette/J.T. WAMPLER Tom Hennelly (center left) of Crafton Tull shows a map of a development planned Monday for northwest Fayetteville to Parks Board members Nicole Claesen (left) and Joel Freund (center right) and park planner Ken Eastin. Joe Fifer (center) with Crafton Tull looks on.