MOSES LAKE – The Moses Lake City Council is continuing talks about requiring impact fees for developers to fund the construction of two new fire stations in the growing community.
The City Council is considering a resolution amending the City’s fee schedule to include new fire impact fees. The topic was discussed at Tuesday’s City Council meeting and can be watched on YouTube, @MosesLakeCityCouncil.
“We will continue the discussion with the City Council on Tuesday, October 24 and invite the public to share comments at the meeting should they have any,” Interim City Manager Kevin Fuhr said.
The October 24 City Council meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Civic Center Council Chambers, located at 401 S. Balsam St., Moses Lake.
Fire impact fees are defined as a one-time payment by new development for capital costs of facilities needed by new development, according to a presentation given by Fire Chief Brett Bastian. Growth pays a portion of the costs of growth-related expansion to avoid taxpayers paying the whole cost, he explained.
The proposal to the City Council lists varying base and administrative fees for new development. The proposed fees are as follows:
The City is looking for an alternative to dealing with State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) mitigation for fire response, Chief Bastian said.
“Impact fees allow us to have a better way of having developers know what costs are up front, rather than doing the SEPA financial component,” he said. It is difficult to know the full costs of the SEPA process until the project review is done.
“It allows us to speed up the process because we can eliminate the financial component of SEPA,” Chief Bastian said.
There are two locations in Moses Lake that need a fire station, the north industrial area and the south area where Yonezawa Boulevard crosses Highway 17.
The North Industrial Corridor is the biggest need now, followed by the south area. This is because of call volume, emerging call volume and travel time.
“We would have staffing spread further across the city rather than concentrated at one station,” he said.
In this case, the proposed fire impact fees would be used for fire station construction only, not the cost of fire apparatus.