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permits and otherwise complete their projects. The delay also p addition, County staff will need some time to put th e administrative processes in place to implement the ordinance. This includes designating an impa ct fee administrator, deve loping the collection system and the qualifying process for a grant/loan program. After discussions with staff, it is recommended that the collection of impact fees go into effect one year from the date of ordi nance adoption. The fair share assessments would continue to be in effect during this period, but would be repealed on the effective date of the impact fees. In addition, substantial new or increased impact fees are often phased-in over a period of six to 18 months. For example, the fees might go into effect in itially at 50 percent, then go up to 75 percent after six months and 100 percent after a year. However, HawaiÓi County is somewhat unique in that some developments are already paying substantial fees, while others are not paying any fees at all. A phase-in period that gradually imposes fees equivalent to the current fair share assessments would provide a windfall for projects that had been assessed the fair share fees. To avoid thes e kinds of complications, no additional phase-in after the one-year period following ordinance adoption is recommended. Maximum Impact Fees The impact fees calculated in this report represen t the maximum fee that could be adopted by the County. The impact fees could be adopted at less th an 100 percent of the impact fee levels shown for each facility type. The County must maintain proportionality be 100 percent. For example, if the County decided to adopt the Fire/EMS fee at 75 percent of the level calculated in this report, it would need to charge 75 percent of the maximum fee calculated for each land use category. The County should recognize that the fees adopted must be high enough to ensure adequate funds are available to reimburse developers wh en necessary. If fee revenue is in sufficient to repay developers for improvements, the total time required for paying ba ck developers would increase with fewer funds available for county impact fee funded projects. Road impact fe at very low percentage of maximum net costs. This is because developers often make in-kind contributions in the form of right-of-way dedica tion or actual roadway construction, and under an impact fee system receive a reimbursement for the equivalent value of such contributions (above any required dedications) against the fee. Therefore, if the fee is adopted at a very low percentage, fees collected will be too low for a developer to be fully compensate In general, the County has considerable flexibili ty in imposing fees geographically, whether it be imposing fees in some areas and not others, or impos ing fees at different percentages of the maximum rates in different areas. However, if this approach is taken, some modifications to the impact fee system should be considered. First of all, solid waste is an exception, since this is the only one of the impa ct fee facilities that has a major island-wide component (i.e., th e landfill). If you are not going to charge the solid waste fee island- wide, it will be necessary to recalc ulate the solid waste fee to remove the landfill component of the cost. The County should also probably give up the flexib ility of spending any of the money collected in a district outside the district. Our recommendation that the County be a llowed to spend up to 20 percent of road, park, fire and police impact fees outside the benefit district in which the fees were collected, provided some benefit to the paying district could be shown, assumes that the fees are applied island- H Ó C \I N A ÐI F S September 19, 2006, Page 21 AWAI I OUNTY NFRASTRUCTURE EEDS SSESSMENT MPACT EE TUDY