Impact Fee & Fiscal Studies

Defensible Numbers For Fees That Get Challenged

An impact fee is a calculation that has to hold up when someone with counsel disagrees with it. That puts the burden on the record: the level-of-service standard, the growth assumptions, the capital costs, and the arithmetic connecting a new unit of development to a specific share of a specific facility.

What The Engagement Covers

Development impact fee studies: By facility category, with the level-of-service standard and fee schedule documented end to end.
Land use assumptions: The growth projections the fee rests on, sourced and stated rather than assumed.
Capital Improvements Element: The project list the fee funds, tied to the capital plan rather than assembled for the study.
Cost allocation plans: Indirect cost recovery, on the same evidentiary discipline.

Built For The Challenge, Not Just The Adoption

The tests are well established: a fee has to bear a rational nexus to the impact of the development it’s charged to, and be roughly proportional to that impact. Meeting them is less about the final number than about whether every input can be traced to a source and every step reproduced.

That is the same problem as every other engagement here, which is why the same machinery applies. Each figure in the study carries its source document and page. The capital costs behind the fee come from a real project schedule with real condition evidence, not from a placeholder.

What You Get

Impact fee study: Methodology, level-of-service standards, calculations, and the proposed fee schedule.
Land use assumptions report: Growth projections with sources, and the sensitivity around them.
Capital Improvements Element: The funded project list, linked to the capital plan.
Adoption support: The record behind the study, in the form it needs to be in when it’s questioned.

Where This Comes Up

Impact fee studies rarely travel alone. They arrive bundled with capital improvement planning and land use assumptions, because they depend on both. A firm that does all three is solving the buyer’s sequencing problem as well as the study.

Capital Planning & Compliance Reporting

A five-year plan with a disclosed ranking model behind it, and the GASB and FCA reporting your auditor and your board expect.

Asset Strategy

Decide what to keep, what to reposition, and what to let go — from your own documents rather than a broker’s opinion of value.

Tell Us What You Own

Most engagements start with a portfolio list and a deadline. That’s enough to have a useful conversation.