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SW8�DT Fee Review December 1, 2014 Page 6 so that it would help to meet our needs and also be fair and consistent to future developers within the city. Here are our ideas for the council's consideration: 1. All conservation easement and wetland acreage would be removed from the total chargeable acres in the formula. 2. Reduce the standard per chargeable acre amount if the developer over-sizes the storm water ponding on site. The current pond sizing standard requires that on site ponding be designed such that the rate of storm water exiting the site does not exceed the status quo, non-developed run off rate. So, for example, if the developer chooses to oversize the ponds such that the rate of water leaving the site is cut in half, then the per chargeable acre fee would be cut in half. What this does from a public policy standpoint is incentivize a developer to treat and hold more water on the site than the minimum, thus reducing the overall burden on the city's storm water runoff infrastructure. It is probable that future storm water infrastructure projects could be delayed or reduced in scope with developers over sizing storm ponds. The exact wording of this idea would have to be worked out by the engineers, so 1 am just trying to illustrate the principle. 3. Include a provision where the council would have discretion to make selective reductions in the storm water fee in certain extraordinary situations where a developer is investing money above and beyond what would norma/ly be expected in a development. In the case of Lakeview I can think of three such extraordinary areas: a. Substantial investment in site restoration and creation of 65 acres of natural, prairie conservation easement. b. Subsfantial expense to clean up elevated mercury/evels in the soils on and around the greens and some tee boxes. c. Creation of a privately owned, public park space with walking trails and creative, natural landscaping areas. Note that we are spending a great deal of money creating this space but still paying the ful/park dedication fee anyway for the overall development. For the purposes of the Lakeview preliminary plat resolution, we would be fine with just leaving the storm water trunk fee as a TBD in the document so that we can hopefully finalize the preliminary plat approval at the next council meeting on December 8t`'. The above letter raises a number of points that deserve further analysis: 1. The current code allows a reduction of the SW&DT fee by a percentage equal to the percentage of the total site placed into permanent conservation easements, but only in the 5-acre zone. Are there reasons this was not also allowed for the 2-acre zone? Following is an excerpt from a 2002 discussion paper regarding the establishment of the 2002 SWMP: In October 1999 Council considered these figures and noted that the fee for a 5-acre lot was extremely high considering we have always looked at low-density development as `environmentally friendly', and it seems under this plan the low density is penalized.