Transportation Impact Fees

Local governments in Colorado have powers granted to them via state enabling legislation (Sections 29-20-102 through 204 Colorado Revised Statutes). While the County has the ability to institute a Transportation Impact Fee, they have limitations and therefore should not be regarded as the total solution for infrastructure financing needs. Impact Fees should be considered as a component of a comprehensive portfolio to ensure adequate funding for public facilities. By law, Impact Fee Legislation has several requirements, which are:

• Impact fees must be legislatively adopted and apply to a broad class of properties;
• Impact fees must be directly related to the impacts of the proposed development;
• Impact fees may only be used to fund capital facilities, meaning facilities with a useful life of five years or longer, that are required by local ordinance or policy. They cannot be used to repair infrastructure or correct an existing deficiency;
• Impact fees may only be used to fund existing and future capital improvements and may not be used to remedy any deficiency in capital facilities that exists without regard to the proposed development;
• Developers may not be charged impact fees to fund facilities to which they have already contributed fees through another mechanism and no individual landowner can be required to provide any site specific dedication of improvement to meet the same need for capital facilities for which the impact or similar development charge is imposed (unless a credit is given for any duplicate costs);
• The accounting for impact fees must be the same as for all other development charges (i.e. they must comply with the requirements of C.R.S. 29-1-801 through 804);
• Impact fees may be waived for affordable housing or employee housing developments