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Show Councilmen Exploring Water Development Fee Park City Councilmen are seriously exploring the possibility poss-ibility of enacting a water development fee ordinanced to aid the city in financing new water sources for the community's growing subdivisions. subdi-visions. If enacted, the new ordinance ordi-nance would require a per unit water development fee along with water" and sewer connection fees now in force for new construction. The water development fee i i i will cover the cost of purchasing additional water rights for the city as well as developing water sources and storage facilities. A current proposal would give builders a break in the fees if they provide the city with water rights. For instance the water development fee would be $2,000 per unit without supplying water rights and $500 with the rights. Although Park City water rights are very hard to obtain, the city will readily accept Salt Lake City area rights from builders. Currently Cur-rently Park City leases a portion of its water rights from Salt Lake City. Council-men Council-men hope to eventually begin trading water rights in that area for patented rights in Park City now owned by Salt Lake City. According to City Manager Arlene Loble, the water rights currently owned by Park City and those now leased from Salt Lake, provide adequate water to serve present developments and those either approved or tentatively planned for the future. i "It is important for Park City to begin acquiring Salt Lake area water rights to trade for those now owned by Salt Lake in this area", Loble said. Although the city with the Salt Lake lease has rights to enough water to allow the city to grow, it lacks the delivery facilities to get water from its source into the reservoirs. Loble said it is critical the Spiro Tunnel water source is developed this summer to provide culinary water to Deer Valley and other projects approved for construction this summer. sum-mer. The cost of developing the Spiro source is estimated at $850,000, approximately $200,000 over earlier estimates. esti-mates. Developers at Snow Creek, McLeod Creek and Ridgeview Subdivisions earlier ear-lier committee $144,000 for the project, but the agreements agree-ments were apprently never signed. Loble says she is confident the developers will however, honor the agreements. agree-ments. Deer Valley has already paid $270,000 and the city has budgeted $239,000 for its share. The project is still short $200,000 even if the developers develop-ers pay the $144,000. The water development fees are being considered to raise the needed money plus provide a fund for future water projects. pro-jects. The city, however, needs the money soon to begin the Spiro project and is considering consider-ing some form of reduction to induce developers to pay the fees up front. One proposal would be to charge developers a $1,400 opposed to $2,000 water development fee for a limited time. If water rights are included the fee would be $250 opposed to $500. Councilmen are expected to act on the proposal shortly. |