Development committee discusses fees for 71/97 construction area


By LOUISE SWARTZWALDER - lswartzwalder@civitasmedia.com



BELLVILLE — The future development of a rapidly developing area of Bellville depends on what village leaders decide the use of some basics — water, sewers and traffic routes — is worth.

The Community Development Committee of the village is wrestling with what it should charge for use of those facilities in the area around I-71 and Ohio 97. That area was annexed into the village in the mid 1990s, and new development there is going to occur in the space of two years.

Love’s Real Estate is going to build a large gasoline station facility. The health group Avita has announced plans to build a new health care building.

Brian McCartney, of K.E. McCartney and Associates and a committee member, is advising the group on the use of impact fees, which were allowed under an ordinance the village adopted in 1997.

The impact fees are in place so a government body can recover money already spent to bring services to an area.

The committee has determined using impact fees for sewer use might not be pertinent, because the sewers out there are owned by Richland County.

The village is waiting for a legal opinion which will lay out what the dollar impact is for Bellville on sewer use.

McCartney said the more important issues are use of water, and the traffic realignment. Construction is already under way to put in a turn lane by I-71 and Ohio 97, and traffic the Love’s Real Estate facility is building will impact the area.

The village has spent $798,220 to put in water lines and if the village wants to recover that, several items could be changed, said McCartney. There could be a 20 -percent surcharge on water bills; there would be a tap-in fee with a per unit cost; there could be a combination of a surcharge and an impact fee, he said.

McCartney gave an example. If a retail business has 10 employees and the fee is $93 for each employee, the cost could be $930.

Mayor Darrell Banks said he thinks the amount of the surcharge discussed should be reduced from 20 percent to 10 percent.

He said the Love’s Real Estate group is putting in some changes that will benefit the village.

The committee had been working with a figure of 5,000 square feet for an “improvements area,” but is thinking that size might be too large and the area should be reduced to 3,000 square feet.

Commercial businesses have “big flows” in water, McCartney said and the village is having to deal with that.

He said the items the committee is discussing “should have been implemented” when businesses started going into that area, but that “didn’t happen.”

Banks said he thinks the area has “come a long ways” from the time no new development wanted to establish itself here.

Village administrator Larry Weirich said the use of the sanitary sewers is a “big one to know.”

McCartney said he thinks it is “likely we’ll move away from impact fees” to try to better regulate any influx of new business.’

The committee will meet again Oct. 18 at 4:30 just before the next council meeting.

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By LOUISE SWARTZWALDER

lswartzwalder@civitasmedia.com

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