Naperville officials expect to refund a group of builders up to $1.5 million in the coming weeks, ending a dispute over development fees.
The refunds are relatively small in size and number, and they come as no surprise. The city has planned for them since reaching a tentative deal with builders last year. But the checks will signify the close of years of contention over fees for future road construction.
Naperville, like many other cities, charges impact fees on the theory that those who profit from development should pay for the roads needed to sustain it.
Builders haven’t rejected the concept, but they balked at the extent of the road improvements they were expected to help finance. They said the 20-year, $75 million road plan, financed largely by impact fees, included distant areas on which their developments actually had little impact.
When builders sued, the city responded by suspending all new development involving impact fees, unless a developer agreed not to contest the fees. Many did.
But as the standoff continued, city officials considered stopping all such development outright, bringing the city’s explosive growth to a sudden halt.
Under that threat, builders and officials tentatively agreed last April to trim the road plan by $25 million, cut the impact fees by about 30 percent and end talk of a moratorium for at least seven years. They agreed builders would pay the higher rates until the deal became formal, but the city would set the money aside for refunds.
With the formalities finally done, the rates are being lowered, and the city will quickly get to work mailing out refund checks, said Michael Roth, a city attorney.
Only builders who paid the fees since April 1999 will be eligible for the refunds, which are $865 for a single-family home, with varying amounts for commercial buildings and other types of housing, according to Roth.
Tom Bart, former president of the Northern Illinois Home Builders Association and a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits, is expecting a grand total of about $3,500.
“This is not about money, as far as my company goes,” said Bart. “It’s about the principle of the thing.
“We are in agreement that, yes, new construction should pay for itself,” he explained. “But those fuzzy kind of matters on the other side of town don’t belong in the computation.”
The settlement doesn’t make any promises about how those computations will be conducted after its seven-year term, but the issue will probably be moot. Officials expect Naperville will have little vacant land left by then.
