This year, El Paso County is continuing a program that allows developers to pay impact fees to for public improvements over several years instead of upfront.

The program, called a Public Improvement District, offsets impact fees due through the county for major public works, like roads, by allowing property owners to pay a property tax assessed each year.

The El Paso County Public Improvement Districts 4 and 5 will start by including just a single parcel owned by the Widefield Investment Group. According to Senior Assistant County Attorney Lori Seago, these two new taxing entities will create the possibility for subdivisions in unincorporated El Paso County to finance a broad variety of improvements under the El Paso County Road Impact Fee Program.

An improvement district reduces the first impact fee for developers approaching the county with a development plan that would increase traffic on county roads according to the criteria of the impact fee program. The fees, at a set rate by land use, go toward regional improvement projects.

Developers have the option of paying fees upfront or entering into a Public Improvement District (PID), which effectively staggers payments of the fees over time.

“It decreases their upfront cost when they come to the county to pay the fee,” she said.

Calling the PIDs “creatures of state statute,” Seago said the new entities phase out PIDs 2 and 3, which are reaching the end of the period new properties can be added and still pay a comparable amount to the owed impact fees.

The location of the two new PIDS is incidental and necessary for the petition process, Seago said.

“We’re just using this one (developer property) as the seed to create the two PIDs,” she said.

PID 4 will be set at 10 mills, while PID 5 will be set at 5 mills. The ballot questions, in addition to setting up the PIDs, allow the districts to keep any tax revenue beyond the caps set out by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. The questions will only go to the one property owner who petitioned for the PIDs.

New properties can petition to join a PID through the first decade of its existence. The districts, and the tax assessments they impose, stop after a 20-year period.

“We’re at the point now where it’s time to stop including new properties into our existing PIDs 2 and 3 and create two new ones to start including properties into them,” Seago said.