Ephrata council talks about fees to support parks

EPHRATA — At a regular meeting Wednesday, the Ephrata City Council discussed how much to raise park fees charged to developers following the imposition in early December of a 90-day moratorium on residential subdivisions.

“Park fees have been very low for quite some time,” said Dan Leavitt, director of community development for the city of Ephrata.

Leavitt said the current fee of $200 per lot, which helps the city build and maintain parks, is simply not enough to pay for the improvement and addition of new parks in Ephrata, nearly all of which are located west of Basin Street.

“This is similar to utilities, and we ask developers to do streets and sidewalks,” said council member Kathleen Alstott. “Homeowners expect to use city parks, and we’ve not added any and some of our parks really need some help.”

Leavitt proposed a fee of $1,600 per lot, in line with what he said was typical of park fees ranging from $1,350 to $2,000 per lot across eastern Washington. However, Leavitt also noted both Moses Lake and Othello charge 5% fees to help fund city parks.

Leavitt also suggested the fee should be collected from developers at the time a subdivision is platted, rather than when building permits are issued for individual lots.

Council member Matt Moore agreed the $200 fee was “so small it was not usable,” but said he was also concerned too high a fee would discourage new home building in Ephrata. Moore suggested a park fee of $1,350 per lot to bring Ephrata “more in line with other communities.”

“We’ve not added a park in a long time,” Moore said.

The city also has the option to accept donations of land that amount to 5% of the acreage of a subdivision for a new park, though Mayor Bruce Reim said land donations can be expensive for the city to develop and so the focus has, historically, been on collecting fees from developers rather than lots of property.

When Alstott asked if the city could sell those lots instead, city attorney Anna Franz said land donated has to be used for parks.

“It’s a donation and dedicated to open space,” she said.

Developer Paul Dart, whose company is working on a major, 50-lot subdivision along Railroad Avenue on the southern end of Ephrata, said the proposed fee would add nearly $100,000 in costs to building new homes in Ephrata.

“We already had a budget in place,” he said.

Dart said while the market is good now, paying the entire cost for park fees up front could make it difficult for developers whose lots sell slowly. However, he also noted going forward, he can budget for these fees in future Ephrata developments.

“This makes Ephrata not so attractive to develop,” he added.

Reim said while there’s no good time to raise this fee, it sounds like the city council is committed to raising the park fee and creating more public green space in Ephrata. He asked Leavitt to get a figure for a fee that would be “a little more dialed in.”

Any proposed fee increase would also have to be reviewed by the Washington State Department of Commerce, a 60-day process that necessitated the 90-day moratorium.

“It was a decision we did not take lightly, and only 10 years too late,” Reim told Dart.

Council members also rejected, in a 5-2 vote, an ordinance which would have set better standards for sidewalks across the city and changed how the fee is assessed for those, as well, citing the need to revamp the entire sidewalk ordinance to change the patchwork nature of sidewalk improvements in Ephrata.

Franz told council members currently certain kinds of improvements on an existing home will trigger the city ordinance demanding property owners put in a new sidewalk or pay a fee to the city of 150% of the price of putting in that new sidewalk.

The ordinance would have created a formal process for getting a bid and setting the cost of a new sidewalk, Franz said. Currently, that’s done by Ephrata Public Works Director Bill Sangster, who told the council he gets a bid on his own.

However, council members said they were concerned attempting to enforce this law on existing homes is difficult, given sidewalks cannot be installed in front of all homes.

“It doesn’t work to enforce this retroactively. The city should take the lead,” Moore said. “What we want are sidewalks in new developments.”

Council member Valli Millard said the entire ordinance should be redone and a better funding mechanism put in place to expand sidewalks across the city.

“If this is important, we need to find a way to get this done,” she said.

Finally, the council approved a 6.2% increase in nearly all city fees, in line with the current national rate of inflation as reported in the Consumer Price Index.

According to city clerk Leslie Trachsler, the only exceptions are city sewer rates, which are going to rise 8% to cover both inflation and the costs to pay back a loan taken out to improve the system, and Splash Zone fees, which are set to rise nearly 12% to cover both inflation and the expected increase in the minimum wage in 2022.

According to the Department of Labor and Industries, the state’s minimum wage is set to rise to $14.49 per hour on Jan. 1, 2022, from the current $13.69 statewide outside the Seattle area.

“That’s a pretty good chunk of change,” Reim said of the fee increase.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.