\n Give $10<\/a><\/p>\n
National City officials have increased the amount they charge developers in an effort to collect more funds for walking paths, public safety equipment, library services and other infrastructure projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The City Council last month unanimously voted to increase development impact fees.\u00a0 The cap for constructing an average-sized single-family home will now be about $15,700. That\u2019s more than triple the city\u2019s current $4,100 fee.<\/p>\n
The city hasn\u2019t updated most of the fees in more than two decades, while overall costs for programming and equipment have increased. Right now, the city charges a flat rate for any single-family home, no matter the size.<\/p>\n
Officials say it\u2019s time for developers to pay their \u201cfair share\u201d to fund city services.<\/p>\n
From the Documenters<\/p>\n
This story came in part from notes taken<\/a> by Jennifer Hua, a San Diego Documenter, at a City Council of National City meeting last month. The Documenters program trains and pays community members to document what happens at public meetings.<\/p>\n Councilmember Ditas Yamane said going without a fee update for this long was an \u201coversight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to recover those costs,\u201d she said during the council meeting.<\/p>\n By comparison: On the higher end, Chula Vista charges nearly $39,000 per average-sized dwelling unit to build single-family homes. On the lower end, La Mesa charges about $4,300 per average-sized unit \u2014 though officials say the East County city is in the process of updating its fees as well.<\/p>\n In addition to single-family homes, the fee increase applies to apartments, mobile homes, condominiums and similar residential developments. The city also collects fees for other developments such as hotels, commercial and retail space, offices, industrial and medical facilities, schools and churches.<\/p>\n Accessory dwelling units \u2014 such as a granny flat or guest house \u2014 that are 750 square feet or smaller are exempt from the fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whenever a developer wants to build a new project, they must pay a one-time impact fee to offset any negative impacts of building. For example, if multiple developers build apartment complexes in a low-populated neighborhood, the city can use impact fees collected from those projects to build, say, a park to accommodate the increase in residents.<\/p>\n The city wants the fee revenue to help fund six categories: police, fire, library, parks, city administration and multi-modal transportation, according to a study<\/a> by consulting firm David Taussig and Associates, which the city hired to assess fee increases.\u00a0<\/p>\n Councilmember Jose Rodriguez said the city will need to find a \u201cdelicate balance\u201d between developer incentives and the city\u2019s goal to boost homeownership.<\/p>\n Rodriguez and other leaders floated the idea of delaying the fee onto developers so that developers don\u2019t have to pay so much upfront.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest obstacle is capital, and that means money, and so the more money they need to put down at the beginning, the more difficult it is for the development to pencil out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As it stands now, the city collects the fees before developers receive permits to build, city staff said.<\/p>\n Resident Edward Nieto, a frequent attender of council meetings, told the council that he\u2019s worried whether the increase is enough to cover the impact of projects.<\/p>\n \u201cMy concern is if the fees aren\u2019t at the appropriate level, who pays for that? Citizens pay for it,\u201d Nieto said.<\/p>\n The state mandates cities to conduct fee studies every eight years<\/a>. But Leni Zarate, a consultant from the firm, recommended evaluating the fee again in the next three to five years, depending on the city\u2019s rate of development. The city is also implementing\u00a0 the firm\u2019s recommendation that it \u201cinclude a provision for an annual inflationary adjustment\u201d based on the state\u2019s everchanging construction costs.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t buy a police vehicle for $152,000, completely loaded, today on 22-year-old data,\u201d Zarate told the council.<\/p>\n The new fees will take effect on April 20.\u00a0<\/p>\n The fee increase comes after National City dipped into its reserves<\/a> to cover its budget this fiscal year. The city has sought other ways to increase revenue, such as requiring permits and hotel taxes<\/a> for short-term rentals.<\/p>\n Over the last 20 years, the city has collected more than $4.4 million in development impact fees. About $3 million has been spent.<\/p>\n \t\t\tType of Content<\/p>\n News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why this matters National City has not updated its development impact fees since 2005, potentially losing out on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[10037,5970,5119,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-190593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-documenters","tag-housing-and-development","tag-national-city","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"table](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771885869_743_thumbnail.jpeg\")
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