SEQUIM — Despite lectures from real estate agents and others, the City Council decided this week to steeply hike the fees developers pay to build here.
Monday’s 4-3 vote was divided between the council’s longtime members and those sometimes called the “new four,” who are now finishing their first year on the panel.
Bill Huizinga, Paul McHugh and Walt Schubert voted no on the fee hikes while Ken Hays, Susan Lorenzen, Erik Erichsen and Mayor Laura Dubois favored them.
The added charges will pour an estimated $85,000 into Sequim’s purse in 2009, Administrative Services Director Karen Goschen said.
Marguerite Glover of Peter Black Real Estate was among the first to plead with the council to reject the increases.
“We’re having a really hard time helping young families, and people who’ve lived here most or their entire lives, get into houses,” she said, since builders’ expenses are passed on to the homebuyer.
Huizinga added that he’d phoned the city of Port Angeles and learned that water, sewer and electrical hookup charges for a home there are less than half of Sequim’s.
Connecting one house to Sequim utilities can cost around $13,000, he said, and “if we adopt the changes [in fees], that will go to $15,000,” or more if the city adopts a new park impact fee in 2009.
Today the sewer and water connection charges for a single-family dwelling total $10,500; the 2009 schedule of fee increases will take that to $11,550.
Also for builders, there will be a new $350 design standards and review fee, among other charges. And if an environmental impact statement is done, the city will bill the developer $3,312.
The fee schedule also includes hikes in rental rates, such as a $175 charge to rent the Guy Cole Convention Center plus $150 to use its kitchen — increases of $75 and $50, respectively.
“If a builder decides not to build because of permit costs, that’s a revenue loss,” real estate agent Ron Gilles said.
“There’s a lot of people out in the community who are hurting,” added Sequim resident Paul Burgess. “We need to not tax and fee and cost people to death.”
To council member McHugh, also a longtime Sequim Realtor, raising fees is folly, now more than ever.
“I’m looking at a death spiral here,” he said.
This year’s building permit fees are below half what they were last year, McHugh noted.
“As activity continues to decline, are we going to continue to look at higher fees?” he asked.
Hays, however, said it’s time Sequim’s fees caught up with the rest of Western Washington.
“It’s painful for the development community,” he said, adding that as an architect he empathizes. But “we’re building to be a city of 15, 16, some say 20,000,” and fee revenues are needed to provide infrastructure for that population.
A look at Sequim’s Web site (www.ci.sequim.wa.us) tells the tale of slumping construction activity.
In 2007 the Planning Department issued 392 building permits on projects. The permit fees provided $813,527 in revenue to the city.
In the first 10 months of this year, 220 permits were issued. The Planning Department fee revenue as of Oct. 31 totaled just $245,677.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
