The amount of park dedication fees the city will be able to collect from January 1 will be severely limited, two senior planners with the Parks and Recreation Department told council at Tuesday’s work session. Robynne Heymans and Scott Grantham explained that PARD is working on changes to the city’s ordinance as required by a new state law, House Bill 1526.
Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, and Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, sponsored the bill. The law applies to cities with a population of 800,000 or more, including Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston.
Under the city’s current ordinance, multifamily housing and hotel/motel developers are required to provide 9.4 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. The new ordinance will require only 0.075 to 3 acres per 1,000 residents, as required by law. The council has until 1 December to adopt the changes. They were scheduled to hold a public hearing on the ordinance today, but because the Planning Commission postponed consideration of the item, staff is recommending that the hearing be rescheduled for 30 November. That’s the last meeting at which the council can take action before the state deadline.
The law requires the city to designate each area of the city as either suburban, urban or central business district. The local appraisal district would be asked to calculate property values for each district.
“I took a look last year at what the impact might be, and last year over 88 per cent of our land acquisitions came from park dedication, and another big chunk of that remaining 12 per cent we acquired with some of the park dedication fees,” Councillor Ryan Alter told his colleagues. “So as we navigate through this, I’m not saying it’s all going to go away because the bill still allows us to do some land acquisition or fee-in-lieu, but I think it’s important that we think about how we address the reduced amount of both fees and land that we might find … and what we might do to offset that.”
Councillor Alison Alter asked staff to give precise figures on the money that would be lost. She said: “It’s not so much the money that’s important, it’s the ability to dedicate the land. There are scenarios where we would end up paying them for land … and I think we need to look at those scenarios very carefully”.
She concluded that the city could end up taking legal action to rectify the situation.
“We really need to explore the options that we have,” she said. “This is an extreme overreach in my view. It goes against all the principles of the national standards on how to do parkland dedication. … We need to use every tool in our toolbox.”
She concluded that “we need to move forward”, but made it clear that she would be looking for ways to fight the new law’s restrictions.
The city’s top legislative watchdog, Brie Franco, told council in May: “Instead of using the correct formula for existing parkland service levels, parkland dedication would be determined and satisfied by the amount of the maximum fee that can be imposed under the bill. Landowners may request a determination of the required dedication amount from the city, and if the city does not respond within 30 days, the city may not require parkland dedication or impose a fee in lieu of dedication.”
The new law also provides for another change that will affect the collection of fees for multi-family developments. Currently, fees are collected at the time of the site plan or final plat. In the future, developers will not be required to pay the fees until a certificate of occupancy is issued. According to Grantham, this could mean a delay of one to five years. Fees will not be allowed for commercial development.
In the current bylaw, park dedication is capped at 15 per cent in the urban core, but not in the suburbs. In the new bylaw, parkland will be capped at 10 per cent citywide.
Over the past few years, the Council has had numerous discussions about who should pay park fees and how much they should be.
The Austin Monitor is made possible by donations from the community. While our reporting may from time to time include donors, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate and transparent. A full list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.