As the city slowly but surely works toward a new 20-year growth plan that is hoped to spread development across the city more equitably, the Seattle City Council began debate this week on legislation to change the way infrastructure improvement costs are shared with developers.
The city says more than 25% of blocks outside of the downtown core lack a water, sewer, and/or stormwater mainline.
Officials say under the current structure, costs in areas that lack infrastructure land on the first developers hoping to pursue multifamily housing in the neighborhood:
Under current City code, the first developer in an area that lacks this infrastructure must cover the full cost to add it—often more than $500,000—regardless of the project’s size. This requirement significantly increases the cost of building anything from a single accessory dwelling unit to a school. Projects facing these costs are 30% less likely to move forward than those that don’t.
Legislation from Mayor Bruce Harrell taken up by the council’s Parks, Public Utilities, and Technology Committee chaired by D3’s Joy Hollingsworth this week would shift the burden.
“The legislation proposes an equitable cost-sharing approach that spreads the cost of these essential utility improvements proportionally among all developers who benefit from the growth,” Harrell’s office says.
“On average over the last 10 years, just 10% of projects funded 76% of development-related utility infrastructure costs,” the city says.
The three bills would change the way Seattle Public Utilities approaches development costs. The first would revise charges for development charges for water, sewer, and drainage infrastructure. The second would “develop municipal assessment reimbursement area authority” for SPU to allow costs to be shared across areas of the city. And the third would change budget appropriations to Seattle Public Utilities and its budget control levels to make the effort feasible.
Officials say the changes should not hit customers and are not planned to affect utility bills.
The hope is for the new policy to go into effect next year.
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Great! Now do something about undergrounding Seattle City Light wires. There are huge neighborhood benefits to underground wires, but the cost falls on developers.
your funny
“Officials say the changes should not hit customers”, but it will hit developers, who will shift some devlopment to less expensive markets.
When governments have huge infrastructure projects, the benefits of which are expected to last for decades, and many of the beneficiaries will be people who haven’t even moved here yet, the answer is often ‘float a bond’. I am not a finance guy, but shouldn’t there be a way to pay for these types of projects with a bond? – and developers could pay a portion of that bond when they do a project in one of the areas getting i frasteucture improvements. It seems to me there would be a huge public benefit to taking some of the uncertainty out of building more dwelling units. We need to remove or lower the barriers to building more dwelling units close in. Density done right.
They charge $10k for connecting an additional dwelling unit to the sewer line, what do they charge a block of condos ?