8A Public - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

City of San Leandro Page 2-2 Parks Development Impact Fee Study May 14, 2025 a 600 square apartment. That type of fee structure is justified only if the actual impact of a 3,000 square-foot unit is five times greater than the impact of a 600 square-foot unit. Otherwise, the impact fees could violate the “rough proportionality” requirement set forth in the U. S. Supreme Court in Dolan v. Tigard [512 U. S. 374 (1994)]. The recent U. S. Supreme Court decision in Sheetz v. County of El Dorado [601 U. S. __ (2024)] made clear that Dolan applies to all impact fees, whether they are applied ad hoc or legislatively adopted. This study uses added population to represent the impact of new development on parks facilities. While the potential for added population may be five times as great for the largest residential units compared with the smallest units, that increase is not linear. In the real world, population per unit does not increase in a tiny increment for each added square foot. It increases in a stairstep fashion, jumping from one person to two persons to three persons per unit and so on. So, a fee structure that results in large units paying five times as much as small units would appear disproportionate to the actual demand created by units of different sizes. This study breaks down residential development into tiered square-feet-per-unit ranges and calculates an impact fee for each range or category. That approach allows impact fees to be graduated by unit size while avoiding the distortions that result from a rigid, fixed fee per square foot approach, and while respecting the need for rough proportionality between the fees and the impact of development as set forth in Dolan v. Tigard. Based on the foregoing discussion, we propose that the San Leandro City Council adopt the following findings pursuant to Government Code Section 66016.5(a)(5)(B) to justify the use of tiered square footage ranges for residential development in this study rather than a fixed fee-per-square-foot approach: 1. A fixed fee-per-square-foot approach would not reflect the actual impact of different-sized residential units on the facilities addressed in this study and would not meet the rough proportionality standard set forth in Dolan v. Tigard. 2. The use of tiered square footage ranges rather than a fixed fee per square foot approach better reflects the relationship between the fees charged and the actual burden imposed by the development. 3. Calculating impact fees for tiered square footage ranges rather than a fixed fee per square foot still ensures that smaller developments are not charged disproportionate fees because that approach allows the impact fees to be tailored to the actual impacts created by smaller developments, while protecting larger units from excessive fees. As discussed above, residential development categories are defined in this study by ranges of unit sizes rather than by unit types (e.g., single-family or multi-family) as is the case for the City’s existing impact fees. Unit-size ranges used to define residential development in this study are listed below. Residential: <550 Sq. Ft. Residential: 550-750 Sq. Ft. Residential: >750-1,150 Sq. Ft. Residential: >1,150-1,650 Sq. Ft.