Oak Creek town officials got a chance Monday to query members of Oak Creek Fire with respect to proposed impact fees the fire district hopes will help keep pace with projected growth in South Routt County.

Under the fire district’s proposal, builders of new residential units would be required to pay $5,695 per unit. New nonresidential floor area, or commercial area, would be taxed at $10,442 per 1,000 square feet of floor area. The proposed assessment structure from the district is possible after a state law was passed and signed by Gov. Jared Polis in May.

The full text of the law, which went into effect Aug. 7, allows Colorado fire districts to impose an impact fee on the construction of new buildings, structures, facilities or improvements on real property without sending the matter to voters.

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Oak Creek Town Board members pressed the fire district’s board and Chief Brady Glauthier over the proposed fee structure, asking why the flat-rate model on residential homes existed.

“Larger houses take more resources to address,” interim Town Manager Mary Alice Page-Ellen said. “Why did you settle on an impact fee per residential unit versus a sliding scale?”

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The discussion about impact fees comes as Discover Land Company is set to submit a planning application to construct roughly 700 luxury homes, a private ski area and golf course across 6,000 acres in the Stagecoach area.

David Park, the fire district’s board president, explained the idea of introducing a sliding scale based on the size of a residential development was discussed, but he said board members ultimately decided a distinction would compromise how the department operates.

“I think you would call us out if we treated Stagecoach Mountain Ranch differently than we did other places in the district. … Our district serves all our constituents, and we treat them all equally,” said Park. “We would not be meeting our responsibility, both fiduciary and morally, to be treating people differently based on their address.”

For commercial space, Park said a sliding-scale concept was more appropriate because those types of properties have “potentially a much higher risk associated with (them) because they are larger and connected buildings and connected businesses.”

The new state law requires fire districts seeking to impose impact fee costs to first perform a “nexus study” to determine the ultimate value of the new tax before a district’s board, not taxpayers, can approve it.

The study performed by a consultant hired by Oak Creek Fire found that, on average, 3,226 square feet of nonresidential floor area and 20 residential units have been constructed annually in the district between 2003 and 2022.

The proposed fees would only be applied to new building permits, but they would also be levied if a property owner increases their structure by 50% or more.

Members of the fire district board were set to discuss the proposed impact fees at their meeting Tuesday night.

The district’s study anticipates just over $1 million in annual revenue from the proposed impact fees between 2025 and 2034.

In 2023, Oak Creek Fire’s budget showed an income of $1.27 million with total expenses at roughly $1.23 million.

In the same year, the fire district reported roughly 300 calls for service, with 60.8% of those calls stemming from demand from residential properties, according to the nexus study. Roughly 25% of the calls came from nonresidential developments and 13.8% of the calls were listed as “unclassified.”

Glauthier said he believes that development in the district will only increase number of calls for the district, and he underscored the importance of the proposed impact fees for the department, which he said is in desperate need of capital to fund basic infrastructure.

The fire chief said the department currently operates across three facilities, a garage on Colfax Street and a building leased from the town that holds three garage bays and two offices.

The district’s station in Stagecoach provides living quarters for four firefighters, but Glauthier said the building “lacks a lot of the necessary functionality that is required of a modern-day fire station” and needs to be renovated.

Between 2024 and 2025, the district estimates its capital improvement plan will require roughly $32.7 million to ensure, at a minimum, the department can continue to provide services as development occurs.

“The impact fees that are being proposed here, are not the end-all catchall,” said Glauthier. “Say, if we didn’t give anyone a discount, we still don’t have enough money to build the infrastructure we need.”

Under the state legislation, the impact fees collected by the fire district can only be used to address capital needs linked to future growth, not current deficiencies.

The fire district’s board has also said the proposed fee structure is a “maximum,” but in certain cases, including for developers seeking to build affordable housing, the fees could be lessened or dropped completely.

“This is only a piece of that. We will probably have to go out for a combination of loans and grants and donations to make all this happen,” said Glauthier. “Part of the problem is people think you are going to get all these impact fees and your problems are over, and they are not.”

“To make it more fair to the people who have been living here for the past 10 years who have been paying your taxes to us and you are expecting, you don’t want your service to be diluted by the next 1,000 people that come in,” he added. “This is to help keep that from happening.”