Kane County keeps impact fee despite plea from Elgin
Despite Elgin's top business recruiter calling the move a job killer, Kane County officials rejected a vote Tuesday that would have eliminated a fee it charges new businesses to open or relocate locally.
Tony Lucenko, director of the Elgin Development Group, urged county board members to oppose continuing impact fees. Lucenko said you don't get impact fee revenue if you can't attract new business.
The county instituted impact fees in response to rampant development in the late 1990s and 2000s. The heavy influx of business and commercial activity left the county strapped for cash to fund the road and infrastructure improvements needed to get workers and customers to and from those businesses. The impact fees are the county's way of getting new businesses to contribute to those infrastructure costs.
The opening of just one warehouse in Elgin can bring as many as 500 manufacturing jobs to the county with average salaries of $80,000 a year, Lucenko said. The property tax on such a facility can more than compensate for what the county receives in impact fees, he argued. The impact fees keep new warehouses from opening because of the extra upfront costs the fees add, he said.
"People tell me we're not going to build in Elgin anymore because of the fees," Lucenko said. "It's a disincentive for jobs. These kinds of things are making us less competitive with surrounding counties, even Cook County."
County board member Phil Lewis attempted to table a vote to keep impact fees in place after hearing Lucenko's comments. But the county transportation staff informed him a lack of action on the impact fees Tuesday would result in the expiration of the county's impact fee ordinance, and the county would no longer have the ability to impose the fees.
When that question went forward, all 24 county board members voted to keep the impact fees in place.
With that out of the way, Drew Frasz, the chairman of the county board's transportation committee, urged his colleagues to support a vote to reduce the impact fees by 10 percent. It's true the county isn't seeing the growth of the early 2000s, but now is not the time to take action that would hinder the county's ability to fund future transportation improvements, he said.
"If you've got a small town, and you've got a fire department, you don't say, 'Boy, we haven't had a fire in a long time. Let's sell the fire truck.' You want the program to be there when we need it," Frasz said.
The board approved a 10 percent discount on the fees by a vote of 19 to 5. Board members Don Ishmael, Kurt Kojzarek, T.R. Smith, Susan Starrett and Penny Wegman cast the "no" votes.