Revenue will help upgrade stations, fire engines as district sees significant growth on horizon.
New construction within the bounds of the Oak Creek Fire Protection District will start paying an additional impact fee next year, an effort that hopes to fund upgrades to aging fires stations and apparatus.
Each new housing unit will pay a flat rate of $5,695 to the district, while new commercial buildings will pay nearly $10,500 per 1,000 square feet of space. The fee, which starts Jan. 1, will only be assessed on new construction within the district. Projects on an existing home, such as additions, will not be assessed the new impact fee.
“When somebody new moves in, all those new houses and new families coming into our fire district, they are using existing infrastructure,” said Oak Creek Fire Chief Brady Glauthier. “The impact fee helps defer the cost for that added pressure on our system, so that way the new residents pay their fair share to help increase our capacity.”
The Oak Creek Fire Protection District had long been a volunteer-based department, but transitioned into a full-time department three years ago, Glauthier said. The facilities, specifically the fire station in Downtown Oak Creek, now need to transition to accommodate full-time staff as well, he added.
This change is paired with significant development on the horizon in the district, which includes the Stagecoach Area. Stagecoach Mountain Ranch and other proposed developments could add more than 1,000 homes to the Stagecoach area alone. Every new house represents additional demand for the district, Glauthier said.
Glauthier estimates replacing the Oak Creek station will cost between $5 and $8 million, and renovations the District needs at the current station in Stagecoach area would approach $3 million. Many of the district’s trucks will soon need to be replaced as well, he said.
“Unfortunately, right now our needs are pretty high,” Glauthier said. “A brand-new fire truck is $1 million. … The average lifespan of a fire engine is about 20 years. All of our engines are about 20 years old.”
While there has been a way for the district to impose a new impact fee in the past, that required several hoops. A law passed earlier this year made it easier for districts to impose impact fees if they conducted a nexus study, which seeks to understand the relationship between new buildings and new capital costs for the district. That law, SB24-194, was sponsored by Sen. Dylan Roberts, who represents the Yampa Valley in at the Capitol.
“It costs the department money to go out and hire third party organizations actually to do an economic feasibility and nexus study to dictate what would the rate be,” Glauthier said. “We just didn’t arbitrarily go we’re going to charge you this much.”
The policy approved by the Oak Creek Fire Protection District Board allows for the impact fees to be waived for certain projects like employee housing, income restricted housing or if the project brings particular public benefit.
The legislation also outlines that this money can only be used to fund capital expenses and not costs for operations, like fire fighter salaries. Still, revenue from the new impact fees is not expected to cover the cost of all the infrastructure upgrades the district needs.
“It probably only cover’s 30% of our needs,” Glauthier said. “It’s a drop in the bucket, but it does help.”