Developers will have to pay a fire impact fee in Kent after the City Council unanimously approved the new fee on Tuesday night.
The Kent Fire Department Regional Fire Authority asked the city for more funds to help build five new stations over the next 16 years or so in an effort to improve response times.
The base fire impact fee for a single-family home will be a one-time cost of about $1,741. Developers are expected to add that cost on to the price of a home. The fee for a new commercial building will be about $1.21 per square foot. The fees will be assessed on new residential or commercial properties and the expansion of existing commercial structures but not the additions on single-family homes.
The city will collect the fee for the Kent Fire Department RFA through an interlocal agreement. The fire department used to be part of the city until voters in Kent, Covington and Fire District 37 approved the formation of the RFA in 2010. The agency is funded through a property tax levy and a fire benefit charge, a variable rate based on the square footage and the amount of service provided to each house or business. Kent previously funded its fire department through the city’s general fund.
The fees will cover about 30 percent of the total cost of construction of the new stations, fire officials said. About 70 percent would be funded by residents and businesses in the RFA district.
“When Kent is growing, which is something we all want, we can’t just rely on the same old fire stations to keep serving a bigger and bigger population,” Councilman Dennis Higgins said at the council meeting. “That’s what the fire impact fees are designed to help out with – to build a more robust fire department to handle the bigger Kent that we all say we want to build.”
The RFA plans to build stations on the East Hill at Southeast 217th Street and 108th Avenue Southeast, in the valley at 407 Washington Avenue and on the West Hill at South 231st Way and Riverview Boulevard. Construction is expected between 2019 and 2026.
The agency also proposes to close Station 75, 15635 S.E. 272nd St., in order to move the station westward, closer to Kent, and open another station in the southern part of Covington. Those two new stations would open in 2032 and 2033.
“I’m proud we passed that impact fee,” Higgins said. “It was very, very needed and very, very well justified.”
Council President Dana Ralph said potential deferral of fire impact fees for developers will be part of an ongoing conversation among city officials.
“We will start working on the ordinance to look at that deferment as soon as possible, so that will be happening sooner than later,” Ralph said. “It is in the process and not something that we have overlooked. There are several other impact fees we will be looking at at the same time.”
The city also imposes on developers school impact fees to help pay for new schools and transportation impact fees to help pay for streets.
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