Are elderly

care facilities taxed too heavily for their impact on

Peachtree City services?

That's the

question City Council is asking itself as it studies a

detailed report from the Impact Fee Committee.

The primary

question, as the committee sees it, is where to draw the

line between facilities that provide a heavy

concentration of care and services, currently classified

as institutional for zoning purposes, and facilities that

allow a good deal of independence for their tenants and

are classified as residential.

The issue

was raised by Councilman Jim Pace at a recent council

meeting, when he said that the impact fees charged for

assisted living facilities are unfair and all such

facilities should be in an office-institutional zoning

classification.

"It's

patently unfair to those who have lived here for so long

to put a whopping tax on them," Pace said after the

committee presented its report at last week's meeting.

While

impact fees average $1 or less per square foot for the

typical home in Peachtree City, that figure jumps to

about $10 per square foot for a room at an assisted

living facility, which is often 100 square feet or less.

The usual residential impact fee is about $1,400.

Pace has

maintained that the city is keeping such facilities away,

while they are being built all around the city, when the

need is going to become greater as the city's population

continues to age.

The

importance of elderly care facilities in the city's

master plan was spelled out at the beginning of the

Impact Fee Committee's report, presented to the City

Council by committee member Jim Fulton. The report also

stated that such facilities would "assume an

increasing importance as the population naturally

ages."

The

committee found what it considers an even bigger handicap

for elderly care facilities in the fact that they are

currently included in the city's moratorium on

multifamily development and restricted to two stories in

height with ground-level access to both floors.

"The

committee recommends that if council wanted to encourage

the development of more elderly care units, it should

remove these units from the moratorium and also remove

the height restriction," the report stated.

But Mayor

Pro Tempore Annie McMenamin suggested that the facilities

remain under the moratorium, saying that such facilities

are going up everywhere and will eventually reach a

saturation level. "Who knows what will happen [in

the market] a few years from now?" she asked.

Pace said

that the state has a moratorium of its own in place right

now, since new facilities are being built only with

certificates of need and the state is not issuing any.

Mayor Bob

Lenox said that if impact fees are issued, they should be

the same across the board.

"Whether

a house has 100 square feet or 10,000 square feet, the

impact fee is the same," said Lenox. "To tinker

with that opens a Pandora's box that I don't want to get

into."

"Facilities

that offer residents support services, but still afford

residents a reasonable degree of independence, should be

classified as residential uses and subject to impact fee

assessments," the committee report stated.

"Many

assisted living facilities include areas for highly

dependent Alzheimer's patients," it continued.

"To the extent that living units are specifically

earmarked for Alzheimer's patients, the impact fee

assessment should be waived. This is clearly an

institutional use."

The

committee also felt that it would be

"inappropriate" to assess impact fees to

nursing homes.

Lenox moved

to accept the committee's report, and that motion carried

unanimously

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