How much will a proposed subdivision cost to police? Soon, Boise-area leaders will know
In recent years, Boise and the surrounding Treasure Valley communities have seen unprecedented growth. Local governments were faced with the challenge of understanding the economic impact an influx of developments might have on specific areas.
Until now, city and county officials did not have a way to find out quickly and accurately how a proposed project would affect their bottom line. But a new tool from the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho, or Compass, promises to do just that.
The tool could prove to be a game changer when it comes to how local governments approach future growth.
“The growth in the Treasure Valley has been tremendous, and it is indisputable,” Amy Luft, Compass communication coordinator, said. “But opinions abound as to whether it’s good or bad. Ultimately, the answer is almost always, ‘It depends.’”
The Fiscal Impact Tool will be able an online program that can analyze how growth will affect different areas of the Treasure Valley. Compass is hopeful it will allow governments to better anticipate growing pains caused by area expansion.
“The tool is designed to look more at local, individual developments or land use plans for cities and counties to be able to understand how those will impact them,” Luft said.
Understand the true cost
Compass hired TischlerBise, a Maryland-based fiscal, economic, and planning consulting firm, to develop the tool. Colin McAweeney, senior fiscal and economic analyst at TischlerBise, gave a public presentation about the tool over Zoom on Tuesday.
McAweeney said most local governments make major decisions without understanding the true cost of a development or whether a land-use plan is fiscally sustainable.
“These tools are probably only being used in maybe 10% of the communities in the country,” he said.
TischlerBise spent a year analyzing the Treasure Valley to understand things like the relationship between development densities and local infrastructure costs, the impact commercial developments have had, the return on government investment into growth and the optimum mix of land uses.
The consultant broke the Valley into 136 service areas. Fiscal impacts often differ between neighborhoods and communities, so using broad averages would not help in getting a real sense of what a new project would mean for a specific neighborhood, McAweeney said. Each service area has its own sets of data within the tool.
One important finding was that the higher-value homes being built in the Treasure Valley have smaller households. With every increase of $100,000 value, family size decreases by an average of 0.2 persons in single-family housing and 0.3 persons in multifamily development.
Minor changes affect services
While those minor numerical changes might not sound like a lot, they translate to 5% to 10% fewer services needed in an area, McAweeney said.
Fire departments and school districts can grasp whether they will need to hire one additional staff member or 20 before the growth project even begins.
Those staff numbers — and the cost to hire them — are important when officials are deciding whether an area can handle growth. The tool has formulas for just those types of questions.
McAweeney gave an example of how the tool calculates the impact a new development will have on Boise police.
For every single-family unit in Boise, there are 0.11 police calls per year on average. For every multifamily household, there are 0.16 calls. For every retail building, there are 0.48. For every office, there are 0.16 calls, and for every industrial building, 0.08.
City planners will now be able to calculate exactly how much police can expect calls to increase.
The tool is programmed to factor in fiscal impact down to the minutiae of increased revenue from additional dog licenses, plumber licenses, court fines and passport fees.
Local governments will have access to the Fiscal Impact Tool through Compass. Compass staff will be trained to use the tool to evaluate both individual projects and long-range growth scenarios.
The Compass staff and TischlerBise will present the tool to Compass’s board of directors on June 21. Once the board members decide to approve new policies for the use of the tool, it will be officially ready for use.
“Very shortly we will be diving in and using it on a regular basis,” Luft said. “We really just wanted to get an understanding of what growth looks like and how it affects the bottom line of different communities.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2021 at 1:14 PM.
