With two lawsuits aimed at Naperville’s road-impact fees still pending, leaders of the Warrenville-based Northern Illinois Home Builders Association are cautiously considering another round of legal action against the city.
And in neighboring Aurora, the city council narrowly has turned back efforts that would have raised the cost of building fees there to as high or higher than Naperville’s levy. Builders there objected strenously to Aurora’s proposals.
The Northern Illinois builders’ organization filed two lawsuits in early 1997 challenging Naperville over its fees. Now, after a July 7 City Council vote to again demand developers pay more for future road improvements in town, the builders association is weighing filing suit again as soon as this fall.
Kent Huffman, executive vice president of the association, said the group has asked its attorney to submit a written report on what might be gained by going to court over the latest fee increases.
The attorney’s opinion is scheduled to be reviewed by the builders association’s board of directors Sept. 8.
“Before we decide to spend thousands of dollars contesting this, we want to know what we can accomplish,” Huffman said.
The Naperville council move earlier this month raised the fees in all building categories except office and warehouse construction. The fees for those categories were lowered.
The vote pushed the fees, as of July 8, to $2,645 from $1,655 for each single-family home in a development. The fees for each new town home increased by about 50 percent, to $1,483.
As recently as the end of 1995, the fee for each single-family home was $792.
The first builders association suit argued that Naperville did not meet legal notice requirements when the impact fee alterations were made in 1996. The city countered with a moratorium on the issuing of building permits, a ban that could be circumvented if developers agreed to sign a waiver promising to pay city fees.
The builders association then filed a second suit in DuPage County Circuit Court challenging the legality of the moratorium.
The moratorium expired with the passage of the new fee ordinance, but Huffman said the builders association will proceed with the second suit to prove a point.
“It’s a legal principle we want to establish,” he said. “You can’t just abrogate your own zoning code.”
The association’s third suit would challenge Naperville on the grounds that the growth projections the city used to calculate land-use assumptions during its review were not included in the mandated public hearing process, Huffman said.
The assumptions were used to formulate a 20-year road-improvement plan that would be funded by the impact fees.
Naperville leaders have defended their handling of the process used to calculate new road-impact fees in 1996 and 1998.
Council members said they think the housing market in Naperville is strong enough to handle a higher fee on residential construction.
Huffman said market conditions are good enough now to “camouflage” the impact of the fees, but higher housing costs eventually could drive people away from Naperville.
Also under pressure from builders and with Mayor David Stover casting two deciding votes, the Aurora City Council has narrowly defeated a proposal that would have imposed new transition fees on developments and may have raised the city’s fees above those of nearby Naperville.
A lengthy debate among developers, their attorneys and representatives, as well as neighborhood activists and aldermen, pitted newer portions of Aurora against older neighborhoods.
Both defeated plans would have raised the cost of an average new home by $600 and the cost of commercial developments by $600 to $2,000. About $1 million a year would have been added to the city’s coffers.
In the end, one alderman whose constituency is divided between old and new voted against the plans to impose transition fees, leading to two 5-5 ties and setting the stage for “no” votes by Stover.
Ald. Tess Wackerlin said the proposed transition fees, combined with other charges like sewer hookup, fire impact, building permit and road contribution fees, would have made the cost of development in Aurora higher than in Naperville. Her northeast side ward consists of newer subdivisions and older neighborhoods.
Transition fees cover costs to the city not specifically included in other fees.
An independent study conducted for Aurora determined overall fees, including donations for schools and parks, to develop a house in Naperville totaled $5,542 before a recent increase enacted there. By contrast, the same fees total about $5,120 in Aurora, the study concluded.
Stover said the proposals far exceeded a transition fee of about $150 recommended by two studies. He said developers would have supported a $150 transition fee.
“It was not intended to provide a significant revenue stream for the city,” he said. “We already did that when we increased the sales tax and initiated the utility tax.”
Neighborhood groups in older neighborhoods were on hand to speak in favor of the new fees.
“The general sentiment was in favor of an increase, mainly because we feel the newer areas have gotten more recently while the older areas were neglected,” said Near Southeast Neighbors Chairman Paul Stuart. “Maybe we could have nice new sidewalks like the newer areas, instead of the older, crumbled ones.”
“You left us to fend for ourselves,” said Shirley Myers, who lives on the near east side. “When you did that, we became overcrowded. The gang bangers moved in . . . Some of us had our lives changed forever.”
But Wackerlin, as well as developers, said increased revenue was unlikely to solve the problems of the older neighborhoods.
“It’s somewhat deceptive to imply to longtime residents in older neighborhoods that somehow a transition fee is going to improve their neighborhoods,” said Ald. Chris Beykirch, who represents the Fox Valley Villages.
“New residents, as well as existing residents, are a part of this same community, and to expect a new resident to pay more than what has been expected by everyone else in the community is unfair and abusive,” said Bryan Turnbo, of the Northern Illinois Home Builders Association.
But Ald. Robert O’Connor and Michael Saville, who proposed the fees, said they were trying to capture revenue lost between the time a home is bought and the first tax bill is paid.
