I was wrong about Impact Fees

I hate to admit it (well, I really don't), but I was wrong when I wrote on September 18 that the City of Woodstock has beat you to the punch, if you are intending to avoid large Impact Fees when you build a new home in Woodstock.

In this article I wrote that Impact Fees are payable to the City, if you buy a two-bedroom home and then expand the house to four bedrooms. That was my belief when I wrote the article, and I based it on oral and written information from the City.

I wrote that Woodstock had not been asleep at the switch and, if you did improve and expand your home, you were going to have to cough up the difference in Impact Fees. How much could that difference be?

Here is the 2012 Schedule:

2 Bedrooms $12,083.00
3 Bedrooms $20,777.00
4 Bedrooms, $24,201.00
5 Bedrooms or more, $24,201.00

If you bought a two-bedroom home, you would pay $12,083 in Impact Fees. If you built a a four-bedroom house, you'd pay $24,201. The difference? $12,118. Do "you" pay these fees? Well, it's the builder who pays them, but it is really you who pays them. You surely don't think the builder is going to eat them. He just boosts the sales price to include them.

So I've been trying to figure out how a two-bedroom house in 2002 becomes a four-bedroom house in 2012, and no "difference" gets collected and no building permits (electrical, plumbing, etc.) are required.

One possible solution occurred to me this morning. If the electrical and plumbing and walls for the two additional bedrooms were roughed in during new construction, but the rooms weren't called "bedrooms", could that help a builder slide by on $12,000 of Impact Fees (or whatever the Fee Schedule was in 2002)?

How do you persuade the Building Inspector that two rooms with electricity in a basement are not bedrooms? And aren't going to be bedrooms? Do you leave off doors? Not close in a closet? Not plan to put down carpet?

Apparently, it's the State law that precludes collecting Impact Fees after the original house is built. How do communities avoid the "impact" that two extra bedrooms have on schools, police, fire, parks, etc.? Think maybe some little rug rats might end up in those new bedrooms, either then or later?