Homes under construction in the Saddle Club subdivision in Bargersville. New homes built in this area are subject to the Interstate 69 corridor road impact fee enacted last year.
DAILY JOURNAL FILE PHOTO
A local road impact fee implemented last year has paid dividends for future road work in White River Township.
Johnson County and Bargersville partnered on the joint road impact fee in August 2021, and almost $200,000 has been collected through the end of last year. With the collections that have been received so far, officials can now begin designing and engineering for a planned roundabout at the Morgantown Road and County Road 144 intersection, said Luke Mastin, county highway director.
“We have allowed that revenue to accumulate, and now we are at the point to begin designing that improvement,” Mastin said.
“The majority of collections were collected by Bargersville, which was what was anticipated.”
The Morgantown Road and County Road 144 roundabout will be the first of several projects to be funded with the road impact fee.
When a study was first done on the impact fees, the county and town agreed to do three projects initially — Morgantown Road and County Road 144, Olive Branch and Mullinix Road and County Road 144 and Saddle Club Road. The Morgantown Road and County Road 144 project was the first project chosen by both local governments, Mastin said.
The fee is charged to all new businesses, commercial developments and homes that are within an impact zone known as the Interstate 69 corridor in western Johnson County. The impact zone stretches from Bargersville’s southern point to County Line Road along State Road 37. The zone includes all of Bargersville and portions of White River Township, between State Road 37 and State Road 135, and county roads that will lead to I-69, such as Stones Crossing, Morgantown, Mullinix and Olive Branch roads.
New single-family homeowners are charged a standard fee of $2,571.64, including a $40.12 bridge and culvert impact fee, based on an average of trips per 24 hours. The charge is based on 10 trips a day, an industry standard that represents the average number of trips a household may take, Mastin said in August.
For commercial properties, the fee is based on the square footage of the building and the amount of traffic the business is expected to generate in a 24-hour period. The fee will be calculated using $268.17 per daily trip, and $4.25 bridge and culvert per daily trip, he said.
It only applies to new construction, not existing businesses and homes, and it is expected to raise $3.5 to $4 million in the first five years from residential development alone. The amount of revenue from the fee for commercial properties is not something that can be easily estimated because the amounts collected will be highly variable, but will likely be several million dollars during the same period, Mastin said.
While residential collection is the primary source of revenue for now, once I-69 is completed through the county, commercial and industrial developments will make up the majority of the fees collected, he said.
