The Issaquah City Council approved the Issaquah School District’s proposed 2019 impact fees, increasing the cost of single and multi-family development for developers, at a Dec. 3 meeting.

School impact fees are charges imposed by the city on new residential development that are passed on to school districts to fund projects in the district’s capital facilities plan (CFP). The fees are determined by the district based on their respective CFP project lists and can only pay for future projects listed for work in the next six years.

The city staff report lists the district’s total CFP budget composition as 99 percent bond revenue, .05 percent impact fees, and .05 percent other revenue.

The Issaquah School District’s proposed impact fees came to $15,276 for single-family developments and $4,399 for multi-family developments. The rates mark a 74-percent increase and 27-percent increase over 2018.

Because the impact fees can only be used to fund the district’s adaptation to the community growth, discounts are applied to fees as a way to soften the cost to developers. The county allows the district to discount the fee by 50 percent. The Issaquah School district also applied a second, smaller discount to the proposed fee to keep home developers active in the district.

The city’s Council Services and Safety Committee, reviewed the fees and offered the council an altered version of the ordinance that reduces the district’s second discount, increasing the price of development.

In the vote, the motion to approve the impact fees received three votes for and two against the committee’s altered version of the impact fees. However, despite a majority vote the motion failed. Mayor Mary Lou Pauly said the motion needed at least four votes to pass.

Councilmembers Mariah Bettise, Victoria Hunt, and Stacy Goodman voted for the motion. Allowing the fees on growth to pay for the responding need for the school district to adapt to that growth was the common reason for support from the councilmembers. Hunt said she was supportive of not allowing the district’s additional discount so it can receive higher rates of funding for facilities needs.

Councilmembers Tola Marts and Paul Winterstein voted against the motion due to the increase in price. Marts noted that the impact fees make up a minuscule amount of the overall budget for the district’s CFP and that the Issaquah School district is one of the most fiscally-prudent districts in the state that consistently do more with less. Winterstein was concerned about the jump in price from 2017 to 2018, and said adding more fees to developers would not encourage growth.

With the vote failing, the school impact fees from 2018 would be carried over and applied to next year as well. The council addressed this by coming back to the topic at the very end of the meeting to approve a motion to reconsider the vote, and then approving the school district’s originally proposed impact fees in a unanimous 5-0 vote.