Citing a rapidly expanding community with increased demand for emergency response services, the Pagosa Fire Protection District (PFPD) Board of Directors voted Tuesday to impose new impact fees on a broad range of future construction projects located within the district’s jurisdiction.
The resolution establishing the fees passed by a vote of 2-1, with directors Ryan Foster and James Martin voting in favor and Wayne Hooper objecting. Board chairman LeRoy Lattin was absent for the vote due to illness, according to the board.
With its passage, the resolution authorizes the PFPD to assess fees upon an array of construction projects within its jurisdiction, including “new buildings, structures, facilities, or improvements, including oil or gas wells and related equipment, on previously improved or on unimproved real property.”
The new fees took effect Feb. 5 and will collect $1,426 from new single-family residences built within the district and $1,104 from new multifamily dwellings.
Nonresidential structures will be assessed a fee of 65 cents per square foot.
The 2024 law granting the district authority to establish the fees also allows it to administer waivers for new housing developments built for low- and moderate-income households, as well as affordable employee housing.
Those developments all received waivers in the resolution adopted by the board.
Tuesday’s vote marked the end of a formal process that began in October 2024, when the PFPD commissioned a study examining how new development taking place within the district might impact its services and equipment.
The results of that study “quantified the reasonable impacts of both new residential development and non-residential development on the District’s capital facilities,” according to the adopted resolution, and prompted the PFPD leadership to recommend fees “at levels no greater than necessary to defray such impacts ….”
The district presented the town and county with a 60-day notice declaring its intention to adopt the fees on Dec. 4, 2024. Neither entity submitted comments during that window, according to the resolution.
Board members heard from two members of the public during their Jan. 7 meeting and also one on Tuesday, with earlier comments focused on the affordable housing waivers.
In a brief exchange on Tuesday with commenter Marybeth Snyder, a self-described “fiscal conservative” opposed to the fees, PFPD board members reiterated what prompted them to seek the fees, as well as what those fees can be used for within the district.
“The department’s ability right now to provide services is getting more and more difficult,” Martin said. “Our community is getting bigger. We’ve got I don’t know how many units of apartments going in right now — all this stuff has to be serviced somehow. But yet there’s not enough revenue stream to update the equipment.”
He added, “Basically, these fees can only be used for equipment [and] facilities. It can’t be used for some random purpose.”
According to the adopted resolution, the PFPD can spend the money collected from the fees on any improvements directly related to district services and with an estimated useful life of five years or longer.
Under those guidelines, using the fees to fund items like fire stations, administration buildings, crew quarters, vehicles and other equipment is all permissible.
The district will be required to deposit the fees into an account separate from other funds and provide yearly reports detailing how much was collected and how it was spent.
Early projections from the PFPD estimate around $150,000 in fees could be collected in the first year.
That estimate was low enough to give pause to Hooper, who applauded the resolution’s verbiage but questioned if the fees would hamper future PFPD efforts to raise money for more costly projects.
“My concern is, if we pass this tonight, it might jeopardize the big-ticket items that we’re really going to need in the future to sustain growth and provide the public safety that we need to,” Hooper said.
He added, “Will this upset enough people that we would lose that margin when we really need a big-ticket item?”
PFPD Chief Robert Bertram described surrounding protection districts as all having adopted impact fee schedules, including Upper Pine River and in Durango.
“Essentially, we’re late to the table,” added Martin.
