Longmont City Council will reduce certain water requirements to help build attainable housing.
When a parcel is constructed in Longmont, there are certain raw water requirements the city has to ensure Longmont will have enough water to serve its population. For parcels without enough historical water rights for the planned use, developers must pay cash in lieu to satisfy the requirements.
However, those fees can trickle down to the eventual residents of a housing development, increasing the overall cost to buy or rent.
On Tuesday, city council unanimously voted to allow a partial rebate of fees pursuant to a written agreement with the developer to provide for-sale attainable housing units.
Longmont already waives this fee with an agreement for affordable housing. The ordinance does not specify what the city considers attainable housing, though in previous discussions attainable housing has been described as housing serving people with 80-120% the area’s regional median income.
Houses seeking a water fee waiver for attainable housing would likely be sold for roughly $300,000 to $600,000 depending on the size of the home, according to Longmont’s mid-tier sales price ranges for 2023.
Providing these waivers would reduce the revenue collected into Longmont’s Water Cash Acquisition fund, which can be used to purchase water rights or otherwise increase Longmont’s water supply. This was an aspect Mayor Joan Peck expressed concern over, asking if the city was “shooting ourselves in the foot down the line” by not collecting this money.
City Manager Harold Dominguez said that Longmont’s water plan is well set even without these specific fees.
“We have a fairly significant surplus (of water) in what we’re looking at,” he said.
Additionally, this fee waiver for water is temporary as city staff works on a farther reaching attainable housing waiver program they plan to bring to council at a later date.
