Fairview P&Z weighs utility rules as growth pressures reach the city edges

FAIRVIEW—Fairview City officials are looking for a formal policy to decide when water and sewer lines should extend beyond city limits, who should pay for the work, and what conditions should come with new service.

The Fairview City Planning Commission took up the issue April 7 during a discussion that grew out of a smaller-lot housing proposal on Brady Lane, also known as N. 200 West. The commission did not adopt a policy, but members and city staff spent much of the meeting working through the questions Fairview will need to answer as development interest increases near the city’s edges.

Justin Jackson, Fairview’s water and power superintendent, told commissioners the city needs a clear policy because staff is already receiving calls about property on Brady Lane, Andy Cox Lane, Day Lane and other areas outside or near city boundaries.

“Fairview City does not have a policy,” Jackson said. “That means when I get a phone call, I tell people, well, it might happen like this, it might happen like that. I don’t know.”

Jackson said he wants a policy that gives property owners a clear answer before they spend money on plans that may not work.
“I just want to not have 30 different opinions,” he said. “That’s worse than having even a bad policy.”

The utility discussion followed up on a March 3 presentation from developer David Mast, who told the commission he wanted to build modest starter homes on property on Brady Lane. Mast said at that meeting that first-time buyers are often looking at homes priced from $350,000 to $450,000 and said he wanted one of his proposed homes to “sell at about $280,000 at top.”

The March discussion focused heavily on frontage requirements. Fairview’s code requires 90 feet of frontage for a single-family home, and the Brady Lane proposal appeared to be short by about 10 feet if divided for three homes. Commission Chair Jason Mardell said during the March meeting that the parcel could meet the city’s 10,000-square-foot lot-size requirement, but “it just doesn’t meet the frontage.”

On April 7, commissioners again discussed whether the city should create an overlay zone or some other mechanism to allow narrower lots in limited cases. The commission did not move forward with a broad change. Members appeared more comfortable with case-by-case exceptions for unusual parcels rather than a citywide reduction in frontage standards.

But the April discussion made clear that frontage is not the only issue on Brady Lane.

Jackson told the commission that the area still has a 4-inch water line and would need an upgrade before additional homes could be added.
Jackson said dead-end water lines must be larger than looped lines because they need to provide adequate flow, including fire flow. He said a dead-end line needs to be at least 8 inches, while a looped line may be able to work at 6 inches, depending on the system.

That matters because the cost of upgrading a line can determine whether a small housing project is financially possible. It also raises the question of whether a developer should pay the full cost of an upgrade that may later benefit other properties, or whether the city should participate when a larger line serves a broader public purpose.

Jackson said cities generally have a few options. A developer can pay for the full extension with no reimbursement. A developer can build the line through a pioneering or latecomer agreement, allowing later users to buy in and reimburse a share of the cost for a set period. Or the city can pay some of the cost, particularly when it wants a larger line installed for future growth, then recover money later through impact fees, rates or other charges.

Fairview has used pioneering agreements before, including on Bay Road. But Jackson and city staff said that kind of agreement can be difficult to write and administer.

Mike Ricks said the Bay Road agreement took more than a year to work out and has been difficult to manage.
“I don’t want to go through that again,” Ricks said.

Jackson said one concern with developer-built lines is that the city still has to make sure the work meets state code, city standards and long-term system needs. If a policy only says the city will reimburse “verified costs,” he said, it may not give the city enough control over design, pipe size, contractor pricing or construction quality.

The policy discussion also covered annexation. Jackson said the draft policy could require annexation when property is contiguous to the city. If a property cannot yet be annexed because it would create an island, the city could require a binding annexation agreement, meaning the property owner agrees not to oppose annexation when the area becomes eligible.

Jackson said that kind of agreement would run with the property, so future owners would also be bound by it.

The commission also discussed charging higher rates or fees for customers outside city limits. Jackson said Fairview currently charges outside-city customers $10 more per month, but that figure could be higher for more distant service if the city can justify the cost.
“It doesn’t have to be $10,” Jackson said. “It can be $100, as long as you can justify it.”

Jackson warned that once the city commits to serving a property, it cannot later treat outside-city customers as second-class users during shortages. He said a draft section suggesting inside-city users could be given priority should be removed or rewritten. The city can deny new permits if capacity is not available, he said, but it cannot promise service and then cut off existing users based on whether they live inside or outside the city.

“If we told them that we would provide them water, yeah,” Jackson said, when asked whether the city would have to continue serving a property. “Water systems, sewer systems, power systems do not see political boundaries.”

Jackson also said the policy should require water modeling for any extension. He said Fairview uses engineers to model whether new lines can meet fire flow and pressure standards, including what he called the 20-30-40 rule: water pressure cannot drop below 20 psi, cannot drop below 30 psi during a fire-flow event and must be at least 40 psi at static pressure. He said the city has a do-not-exceed agreement with engineers of about $2,000 for that review and that developers requesting extensions should pay that cost.

The discussion came as Fairview is already preparing for a major culinary water project. At a March 19 City Council meeting, Jackson outlined an $11.6 million upgrade that would rebuild and improve mountain springs, build a new 1.5-million-gallon storage tank and replace long stretches of aging pipe. Jackson said at that meeting the project could increase available water by close to 100 million gallons per year, mostly by fixing leaks and inefficiencies rather than relying on large new sources.

Jackson repeated some of that background to the Planning Commission, saying Fairview’s existing system has improved even as the city has added homes. He said the city has added about 86 homes during his time with the city while using about 18 million gallons less water annually because of leak reductions.

The city’s larger water plan matters to the extension policy because Fairview must decide how much growth the system can support and what standards new development must meet.

Jackson said Fairview’s water and sewer systems are designed around assumed build-out density. If the city allows smaller lots or higher density in areas where the system was planned for larger lots, he said, the city may have to offset that increased demand through landscaping limits, reduced irrigated area or other measures.

“If you change lot sizes in Fairview, I have to rebuild the water system and the sewer system,” Jackson said.

The commission also discussed the risk of allowing new homes near the city to rely on private wells and septic systems when those areas may eventually need city utilities. Jackson said that approach can leave homeowners with large costs later if wells fail, septic systems become restricted or the state requires sewer connections because of nitrate impacts downstream.

He said Fairview should avoid creating a future problem by allowing development that will eventually come back to the city for water and sewer without having paid into the system from the start.

The planning commission did not take decisive action on the draft policy. Members agreed the city needs more work on the language, including how to handle annexation agreements, outside-city rates, developer-paid water modeling, oversizing costs and whether water extensions should be paired with sewer service when practical.

Jackson said the policy should not stop reasonable growth, but it should keep the city from being forced into rushed decisions.
“We need to put together a good policy that doesn’t stifle growth,” he said, “but it doesn’t overburden the citizens as well.”