Municipal Fees Are Breaking our Cities and Towns: What Did We Learn?

Municipal fees for development across the nation are skyrocketing faster than medical or education costs. Who is driving this trend? What are the results? Where is it most egregious? When did it start and is there any end in sight? Why is it important to Americans to pay attention to this topic? We found the answers.

Everyone knows that any politician that raises taxes is not likely to get re-elected. So elected officials everywhere have encouraged and led the effort in virtually every governmental body in America, from local to federal, to use fees to sneak in new ways to raise income without drawing taxpayer ire, and then get fired. While most folks have not noticed, the development industry certainly has, as it is being slowly crushed by this trend. There is another group of folks that are noticing, but not directly: The poor, retired, and working classes of America. The affordability of housing in America is being steadily destroyed by the onslaught of rising fees. There I said it. Cities are largely to blame.

Up to the early 1980's, the costs of development were being born by everyone in a taxing district through the payment of property taxes with little else to support the strains on infrastructure. Indeed it was an unfair situation when developers had little or no responsibility to contribute to any infrastructure upgrades outside of their project to support their projects. Yet municipalities then kept pushing the envelope upon discovering that new sources of general budget revenue could be found through development projects in high demand markets. Even the general public could be billed for new and increasing "storm-water management" fees every month, bumping up their water and sewer bills, and their trash collection and recycling fees. All over America we have been enduring this quietly, but now the chickens are coming home to roost. Every fast growing municipality is now talking about an affordable housing crisis that they have created, and only they can now solve.

We just completed an exhaustive research project of all the municipal fees charged by the largest municipalities in the state of North Carolina. Someone ought to do it for all of the country, however just doing the cities in the Triangle area and other large NC cities was hard enough. Most of what we discovered was unsurprising, and one thing really was.

1. Municipalities use their fees to slow and accelerate development they do not or do want.
2. Secondly, what is unwanted and wanted (disallowed or allowed) is largely determined by activist voters, also known as NIMBY's ("not in my back yarders").
3. The truly surprising part of the research results though was just how opaque the municipalities intentionally make their fees for those that wish to investigate them. This practice has to end, and I intend to help end it. No one should have to pay a civil engineer $100.00 per hour to figure out what it will cost to build a driveway or a deck. Today in our corner of America, for all intents and purposes, we do.

We intend to release the results of our massive research project in a strategic way to reach as many folks as we can with who and what is really causing the housing affordability and development crisis in America. I only hope I can get some folks to listen. Are you interested? What do you think is damaging housing affordability and access?