Bonney Lake has one of the highest traffic impact fees in the area and the City Council is considering freezing it to 2008 levels until 2010.

After more than 30 minutes, councilmembers decided to further discuss the matter at its Monday workshop.

The fees are assessed to developers prior to building, collected by the city to offset some of the costs associated with building.

Effective Jan. 1, the city’s TIF rate increased $869 from $3,995 to $4,864. The fee is based on changes to the Construction Cost Index. The city’s TIF adjustment with Washington State Department of Transportation is 21.74 percent which is $4,864 per afternoon or evening trip.

Compared to other cities in the region, the fee for a single family residence is $4,913 in Bonney Lake and $1,177 in Sumner. The region’s highest TIF is $6,478 for Fife.

Councilman James Rackley believes businesses looking to locate in Bonney Lake will look at other cities if the city doesn’t do something about the fee. He added the city should look into expanding the rebate tax incentive program currently in place for downtown and Eastown.

“I think we should be looking to encompass the whole town,” Rackley explained. “We need to extend and improve the rebate program to attract businesses here.”

Councilman Mark Hamilton said the city is the second-highest on traffic impact fees for single family residences, but is mostly in line with other cities in other TIF comparisons for restaurants and fast food businesses.

“I do not feel the city is out of line in TIF,” said Hamilton. “For many years we didn’t collect any TIF and we wanted to make sure we had them in place and that developers that came into the city paid their fair share.”

Hamilton he can support the freeze, but wants more information on the issue.

“This is not a competition with other jurisdictions,” Hamilton added. “We should never ever use it to be that. Mitigations fees are nothing more than to maintain the system. They’re not there to improve the system.”

Public Works Director Dan Grigsby said the reason the TIF increase this year was because city consultants said the cost of paving and roadwork is going up faster than the general cost of construction.

He said another reason for the increase was the city changed the CCI from the Engineering News Record to the Department of Transportation CCI. The CCI rate went up 3.85 percent compared the DOT’s rate of 21.7 percent.

Grigsby said TIF has the biggest impact on restaurants and multifamily housing.

He said a growing city like Bonney Lake has higher TIF than established cities like Renton or Tacoma, because more roads need to be built.

He added TIF funds are used for road improvements and that the city didn’t start collecting the fees until 2003.

“We haven’t spent a lot of the TIF money yet, but we are going to spend a lot on Old Sumner-Buckley Highway,” Grigsby noted. “We saved up for six years to do one project.”

Rackley said he supports the TIF staying at a reasonable rate and to find a way to off set it and feels a sales tax rebate is the best way.

Planning and Community Development Director John Vodopich said there are nine pending applicants who will pay the 2009 TIF, but none have paid yet.