St. Helens looks to spur development by trimming fees

SDC fees on new residential developments will be cut by 50 percent until end of 2010, in an effort to bring new homes

By Stover E. Harger III

The South County Spotlight, Feb 24, 2010

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Last week, the St. Helens City Council voted to temporarily cut a fee affecting new residential developments by half until 2011.

The decision to cut “System Development Fees” for new residential developments by 50 percent was made after months of city discussion about how to best give developers that extra nudge to entice them to build in town. The city had already made a similar change to commercial development fees near the end of 2009.

“There has been a number of cities around the state that have, at different times, looked at different options to create some incentives to spur activity,” said St. Helens City Administrator Chad Olsen. “There’s a lot of discussion about it.”

Scappoose cut its own SDC fees last year for private developments by 50 percent.

Olsen said the city of St. Helens takes SDC charges seriously because it is how they fund their own projects.

SDC funds flowing into the city, if developers sign up to partake in the decreased fees that is, could be affected by the change, Olsen said, but it shouldn’t drastically hurt the city and its future capital developments. It may push back a few down the road, but that’s it, he said.

SDC funds, a one-time fee that developers pay to cities for their use of already in- place systems like sewer, can be used to either pay for current or past capital construction projects.

“I think that the markets have opened up a little bit,” said Olsen. “It’s obviously still slow and everything, but it seems like it just would be a little bit more practical to have a reduction in the SDCs now than at the height of the economic crisis.

The city will reexamine the fee reductions at the end of the year and determine if it would like to keep them going for another 12 months.