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Poolesville officials have proposed reducing impact fees charged to developers building in the community by $7,000 per house because the town has completed several large projects since the fees were last reviewed, allowing the town to calculate the fees using actual costs instead of estimates.

The town updated its impact fee schedule in 2002 as part of its work on Poolesville's 2005 Master Plan, according to Town Manager Wade Yost. Bethesda-based Winchester Homes, which recently broke ground on its 98-home Stoney Springs subdivision in town, and Charles H. Jamison Inc. Real Estate requested that the town revisit its fees in February.

Impact fees are intended to offset the cost of new development and have been collected by the town since 1992. Montgomery County also collects impact taxes on development in Poolesville.

Impact fees increase incrementally each year and are determined by calculating how much of an infrastructure improvement will benefit new residents. Projects that would be necessary if the town's population stayed the same are not impact fee-eligible, but projects required to accommodate new residents can be funded entirely by the fees. Infrastructure benefitting new and existing residents may be partially financed with impact fees.

The town currently charges $17,133 per home and proposed reducing the fees to $12,150 per home at a worksession last week. Using a standard formula, the town recalculated its impact fees using updated figures from its annual budget. Some projects included in the earlier calculations were funded in part with grants, which lowered costs for the town, and others have been completed since the fees were last revised, allowing the town to use more precise, actual costs in its calculations instead of estimates.  

That figure was further reduced to $10,515 per home, Yost said at Poolesville's commissioners meeting Monday night. An error was made during earlier calculations, and the town refined some of the cost estimates for future wells, he said. 

The town is required to make "good-faith estimates" when determining impact fees but may revisit them at any time, according to former Planning Commission Chairman Bill Moore, who assisted with the review. "I think the town has bent over backwards to be fair here. They could have just said ‘We used our best judgment,'" he said after the worksession.

The developers in attendance agreed.

"The town has really endeavored to be fair," Winchester Vice President Mike Conley said.

Winchester Vice President Mike Conley and Tom Kettler, president of Kettler Forlines Homes at Brightwell Crossing, which is planning a 177-home development in Poolesville, said they wanted to look at the model used before a decision is made to verify that the assumptions used in the calculations, like whether the developer or the town is making the initial capital investment on a project, are accurate. 

The record will close at 4 p.m. on June 12. Commissioner Jim Brown said he would consult the town's Ethics Commission before voting because he has a property on the town's water allocation list and would be subject to impact fees if he builds.