County Fire District Impact Fee Programs

Yolo County, California

Yolo County, a large and geographically dispersed region, initially retained BAE to assist rural fire districts in establishing development impact fee programs. BAE worked with numerous local fire districts to create the documentation needed to comply with AB 1600, which requires a legally-defined nexus between the fee and the costs it is intended to offset. This legal framework only permits fees to be charged for new development impacts; it does not permit projects to offset existing deficiencies in the system.

To meet the challenge of extensive data collection from numerous small, sometimes volunteer-staffed districts, BAE facilitated an innovative process by initially organizing a series of training workshops for fire districts' personnel to inform participants about the legal requirements for impact fees, help develop growth projections, and identify resulting new capital equipment and facilities’ needs. BAE then worked with individual fire districts to prepare each nexus analysis and calculate fee schedules, allocating the identified costs to new and existing development. With this necessary documentation, individual districts were then able to work with County staff to adopt fee ordinances, resulting in a successful program for each fire district to defray its allowable capital costs and maintain service levels. Numerous successfully adopted and implemented fee programs resulted from this process.

After adoption of the County's new General Plan in 2009, BAE was again retained to provide technical assistance to six fire districts as they conducted 5-year impact fee program updates, aligning their fee program assumptions with the updated General Plan. This involved updating development projects to reflect new local land use policies and changed environmental and economic conditions, revising capital programs and cost allocations, and preparing updated fee schedules.