An Environmental Services Commission meeting will be tonight at 6:30pm at City Hall, and here’s one more thing I hope they talk about there.
Another aspect of the new information about DFCCs is that there could be some pretty large buildings affected (I had thought that it was mostly outlying areas, but it was clarified that many DFCCs exist for Downtown and Wilburton too.)
This changes my understanding of the financial picture, as we’re basically planning to forgive $45M in outstanding DFCCs that those buildings would be charged now.
If I were a commissioner, I’d ask what the scale of those charges is for the parcels which are most affected by the change – is it as high as $500k? I’d also ask how much we’ll be leaving on the table that would have been paid back into our community-wide capital investment kitty by projects that are already in planning or have been permitted. Presumably there would be developers lobbying for this change if they’re affected, or projects that staff believes are more likely to happen if the DFCC charges are removed.
I still think the general idea of sunsetting DFCCs is not unreasonable, but I hope we are straightforward about the costs to our utility ratepayers. I apologize for contributing to the impression that this is something that would only put costs other builders.
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