Mesa County (Grand Junction), Colorado

Multi-Jurisdictional Road Impact Fee Study
   

Duncan Associates assisted Mesa County and participating municipalities in preparing a system of regional and non-regional transportation impact fees. The service area was the Grand Valley Airshed, which includes the area around Grand Junction and the towns of Fruita and Palisade on either end of the valley. In the study we calculated two different fees: a regional road impact fee and a non-regional road impact fee. The idea was that the regional road impact fee would be collected by each jurisdiction and pooled to be spent on regional improvements, while the non-regional road impact fee would be spent within or near the boundaries of the jurisdiction

that collected the fee. Regional roads were defined as all state and federal highways and selected non-state roads, with the remaining road comprising the non-regional road system. The maximum fees we calculated for a single-family unit would be a combined total of $2,854 for non-regional and regional fees, excluding extraordinary structural improvement costs. After lengthy negotiations, the participating jurisdictions decided to combine the regional and non-regional fees, and to charge $1,500 per single-family unit, and the same proportion of the maximum combined fees for other land uses. All regional and non-regional roads would be eligible for funding with the combined road impact fees. The fees were adopted in 2004.