An Impact Fee by Any Other Name

Tuesday’s Salisbury City Council work session afforded yet one more display of the intellectual giant we all know and love … Salisbury Councilman Gary Comegys.

During discussion of the proposed impact fees which the city government is finally getting around to enacting a small problem was raised. Mr. Comegys objected to the fees because he claims to have received authoritative legal information that these fees could not be waived for affordable housing projects. He also claimed that if the city council chose to waive such fees the city’s general fund would have to contribute an equal amount to the fund holding the impact fees.

Councilwoman Terry Cohen brought up the fact that this was indeed problematic as the city has waived capacity fees for water and sewer on more than one occasion already. Mr. Comegys’ response - “That’s why we call them ‘capacity fees’”.

OK. After you have picked yourself up off the floor laughing I want you to think back to the good old days of the “Dream Team”. While I can’t swear that Gary Comegys has stated multiple times that the capacity fees are in fact impact fees I am pretty certain that he has said so. I am particularly confident that he said so at two different candidate forums while he was running for re-election. I am 100% certain that my favorite ex-councilman, Mike Dunn, has said so multiple times.

Which is Gary? Were you telling the truth while asking the voters for their support or are you telling the truth now?

Another particularly humorous note to the affair was City Attorney Paul Wilber. He remained mute on the subject. I can only assume that Mayor Barrie Tilghman had not provided a script on the subject prior to the meeting.

Technorati Tags: Salisbury, politics, salisburypolitics, development, impactfees, affordablehousing

Powered by ScribeFire.