Developers will soon have to pay a higher park impact fee in Franklin.
The Franklin City Council unanimously approved new park impact fees on Wednesday. The fee was increased from $1,142 to $2,490 per building permit for single-family homes. Apartments and duplexes would pay a $1,619 fee, previously said Chip Orner, director of parks and recreation.
Developers pay a park impact fee when pulling a permit to build any dwelling, whether a single-family home or multi-family housing. The fee covers new park development and new infrastructure improvements since additional residents impact parks and recreation, Orner said.
The fee is only charged for new construction and homeowners who remodel do not have to pay it, Orner said.
Income from the fee cannot be used for day-to-day operations, maintenance of existing facilities or staffing. The city has been using park impact fees for approximately 25 years.
While there was no one who spoke during the public hearing on Wednesday, council member Ken Austin said the rate increase was “probably overdue.”
A higher park impact fee would help pay for “fairly large” park projects within the next five to 10 years, Orner previously said.
Orner said these include:
• The Scott Park expansion for youth athletics
• The last renovation for the aquatic center
• Pickleball courts at Kingsbridge
• Trails along U.S. 31
• The Greenway Trail extension to the new Winterfield subdivision on Hurricane Road.
“Scott Park is a large project. The pool is a large project that we are going to have to figure out how to fund somehow,” Orner said during the plan commission meeting in December. “Our problem is we can’t have nice facilities and then let them age out and not have them anymore. We’ll all be run out of town if that’s the case. We have to figure out how to do this somehow.”
Orner also said park amenities are an important part of Franklin, as the city was an “early leader in greenway development in the state of Indiana,” and home builders websites use the city’s park amenities as a selling point.
Over the last five years, city officials haven’t collected a lot from park impact fees, but they have almost collected more within the last six months than they did in four years because of two developers building apartment complexes, Orner said.
City officials used some park impact fees for the overall $9.8 million project for Youngs Creek Park and the amphitheater, the pickleball courts at Youngs Creek Park, expanding Province Park, and the large shelter at Blue Heron Park, Orner said.
Franklin’s proposed $2,490 park impact fee is similar to those of other communities. Greenwood charges $2,784, while Plainfield charges $2,533, Orner said.
This would also be a way to fund things in light of legislative changes, like Senate Enrolled Act 1 of 2025, which limits the amount of money that local units of government receive from property taxes, previously said Lynn Gray, plan commission and city council board attorney.
Developers “tout” quality of life amenities because that’s why people move to different communities and why developers build homes in certain communities, Gray said.
“This is a way to maybe get those expenses associated with them to at least get them started without the existing taxpayer having to fund them because we just simply won’t be able to with SB 1 being whatever it is until it gets changed,” Gray said. “You’re not going to be able to do some of these new infrastructure projects without looking at alternative sources of funding.”
The increased fee will go into effect after six months, Orner told the plan commission in December.