CAMAS — The Camas City Council this week approved changes to the city’s park impact fees, which will charge developers more for larger homes and create new categories for accessory dwelling units and commercial-industrial developments.
Camas currently charges a parks impact fee of $5,853 for residential units, no matter the size, and does not charge for ADUs or non-residential units.
The new impact fees will charge less for residential units up to 1,000 square feet and will charge up to $13,549 for new homes 2,601 square feet or larger.
The schedule also includes fees for ADUs scaled to 50 percent of the principal housing unit’s impact fee — or about $2,129 to $4,259 depending on the square footage of the main housing unit.
The impact fees will help Camas pay for park improvements that accommodate new residents.
Parks Director Trang Lam, who is leaving the city to be the Port of Camas-Washougal CEO, said city leaders had two options: keep the current impact fees and scale back future parks projects or increase impact fees paid by developers and be able to meet some of the parks and recreation demands new residents and workers will put on the parks system.
“The reality is that, even if we start collecting now, we’re still behind,” Lam said this week. “If we do nothing now or scale just slightly above, we will continue to fall further behind.”
Dissenting votes
The council voted 5-2 during its regular Monday meeting to approve the new impact fees recommended by the Camas Parks Commission, with Councilors Leslie Lewallen and Jennifer Senescu casting no votes.
“I think impact fees have become another source of revenue for cities that may or may not be associated with the actual reason that they’re there for,” Lewallen said Monday.
Senescu said she was still against “doubling” fees for developers building homes larger than 2,600 square feet.
“People here can’t pay for water, sewer, garbage but we want to charge double,” Senescu said.
Other council members pointed out impact fees are not something current homeowners pay — or even fees that new homeowners or residents pay on an ongoing basis — but a one-time fee developers pay to ensure population growth is paying for its share of new infrastructure.
“It’s not double for anyone living in a house,” Councilman John Svilarich told Senescu in June. “It’s built into the cost of a house.”
Lam said the higher park impact fees are in keeping with new state laws that encourage the development of smaller, more affordable housing units. Washington law says cities must scale impact fees based on square footage, number of bedrooms or trips generated for residential units to “produce a proportionally lower impact fee for smaller housing units.” Laws prohibit cities from charging impact fees on ADUs that are greater than 50 percent of the impact fee for the main home on the property.
The new fee schedule will take effect Jan. 1.
Commercial buildings
Another addition will charge new businesses by the square foot depending on the type of development:
- Industrial: 26 cents per square foot.
- Retail: 47 cents per square foot.
- Office: 48 cents per square foot.
- Health care: 63 cents per square foot.
Beginning in January 2026, the city also will adjust the park impact fees to account for inflation.
Councilman John Nohr said that, as a longtime resident of Camas, he agrees that newcomers must pay for the demands new development puts on the city’s various services and systems, and that he doubted the impact fees would have a negative effect on the cost of housing in Camas.
“Houses sell for what the market can bear,” Nohr said.
