Variations of proportionate-share fee design

This chapter reviews general methodological variations in impact fee design, focusing on their features and differences and presents a series of nuanced applications for water and wastewater impact fees to illustrate how robust the approaches are to addressing policy issues. The standards-based methodology calculates impact fees based on the value of the increment of public infrastructure needed to meet the needs of new development. The recoupment value method essentially results in new development reimbursing existing development for new development's proportionate share of the cost of existing improvements, based on total system treatment capacity available in the current year. The chapter reports findings from a selection of impact fee technical reports from a cross section of communities based on region, size, growth rates, and approach to calculating impact fees. It presents a survey of the Florida communities, focusing on variations in impact fee design.