City Government

City debates covering business impact fees as incentive for growth

Posted: Jan 24, 2013 9:28 PM by MTN News

The city is considering paying impact fees for specific industries as an incentive for growth.

"Through our economic development plan we have some targeted industries that we'd like to incentive that we're fortunate to have in town, many of them but would love to see them to continue to expand and re-invest," said City Manager Chris Kukulski.

City impact fees are used to cover infrastructure maintenance costs.

City manager Chris Kukulski says officials analyze the impact fees about every three years to see if the fees match growth and demand.

City officials analyzed and adopted the water, sewer and fire impact fees at the beginning of 2013. Transportation impact fees will likely be adopted by the commission on Monday.

Kukulski says the big debate during Monday's meeting will be whether or not to the city should pay impact fees for certain industries as an incentive. Those industries Kukulski says, are ones involved in manufacturing, biosciences, Lasik and other "base industry jobs".

"There will be a fair amount of dialogue around should we or shouldn't we do that as a community and if we are going to incentivise those target industries, who is going to pay for those impact fees on their behalf?" said Kukulski.

After the 2009 explosion in down town Bozeman, the city paid the impact fees for several buildings funded by the downtown TIF district. Kukulski says the commission will look at using the TIFD or the general fund to cover the impact fees if they choose to do so.

The city commission will meet at City Hall on Monday at 6 p.m.