Buyers of newly built homes in Fresno are on the hook for a fee of more than $4,000 to ensure they have enough water coming to their residences. But a trio of major home builders is challenging the city’s fees in court, contending they’re too high, are unfair and amount to a tax that violates state law.
The “water capacity fee,” which adds up to $4,246 for a typical new single-family home with a one-inch connection to a water meter, was approved in April on a 5-1 City Council vote following a contentious public hearing at which developers voiced strong objections. Many of those concerns found their way into the litigation now working its way toward a March trial date in Fresno County Superior Court.
“We want to make sure that new-home buyers pay their fair share, but we want to make sure it’s fair and equitable,” Granville Homes president Darius Assemi told the council earlier this year. “We’re simply going to pass it through. … We want to make sure an appropriate fee is put together with the correct amounts.”
The Building Industry Association of Fresno/Madera Counties, Granville Homes Inc., Wathen Castanos Peterson Homes Inc. and Lennar Homes of California Inc. filed the lawsuit in May. Less than a month later, however, the trade association pulled out of the case in a petition to Judge James Petrucelli without detailing a specific reason.
“The board decided that it was not in the BIA’s best interest to continue,” said Mike Prandini, the association’s president and chief executive officer. “If we won, it would just delay the inevitable. The builders felt the amount (the city) was charging wouldn’t go down much, if at all, so it wasn’t worth the resources to battle the city.”
Attorneys for the developers say the fees unjustly burden builders with extra charges that they say cannot be legally justified. They point to references in a water fee study conducted for the city that describe doubling the treatment capacity of the Northeast Surface Water Treatment Plant to help meet future water needs. They assert that the expansion requires a detailed analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act before fees for that portion of the long-term program can be charged.
“Basically the bottom line is primarily the 50 percent of fees for the northeast treatment plant,” said John Kinsey, one of the builders’ attorneys. “It increases the costs for people who are interested in buying new homes.”
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