Leopold Vows Firm Stand on Impact Fees

Today's Sun has an article on decreasing home sales in the County, dovetailing that finding with Executive Leopold's increasingly firm stand in favor of a significant increase in impact fees. Predictably, the homebuilders got on the record mewling that "higher impact fees would limit their opportunities to provide affordable housing." Leopold responded, with all that really needs to be said about that laugher, "the enormous success of the homebuilding industry in the previous few years has not produced a significant increase in work-force housing units." In fact, I'm pretty hard pressed to identify any "work-force" housing units that have been produced in the County, outside the few theoretically mandated by the City of Annapolis.

It's a wonder these people can sleep at night. Put an inclusionary zoning bill in front of them for their endorsement and they send their top shill to the County Council to fight it tooth and nail. Tell them you are going to make new development pay its own way, and they try to paint you as an "opponent of workforce housing." "Shameless" doesn't even begin to describe these folks.

Let us hope that the County Executive can stand firm, and that the Council can stand behind him, in his effort to expand impact fees to include at least 100% of road and school related impacts. We can be assured that the development community will be bankrolling the opposition.