FEES: How they hurt community

After having just read the letter by Robert Thomas in the Sunday paper about impact fees and the relation to the inflation of costs of goods and services, I have something to add in agreement with him.

As a builder and property manager, I have a client who owns property in Hayden where we were going to build a 12-plex for workforce affordable housing that he has decided to leave vacant due to the EXTREME fees for the project. They would total more than $165,000! That amount would substantially build the building and would ADD more than $100 a month to someone's rent!

If the building was built it would add many thousands of dollars to Hayden's coffers in the form of yearly property taxes and sewer fees. It would have also added construction jobs that are sorely needed for LOCAL workers.

That brings me to a related point. Together we pay TENS of thousands of dollars in property taxes that are used by LCDC and given to various OUT OF TOWN companies to build subsidized housing! They have given more than $350,000 each to a project on Seltice and one in Riverstone. Now they are giving more than a MILLION dollars of our property tax dollars to a new project on Fourth Street!

If government would get out of the building business and leave things the way our Founding Fathers intended, instead of being ANTI-CAPITALIST, we would be better off!

JEFF TYLER

Coeur d'Alene