Building quality places: impact fees and job growth Friday, June 20, 2003 Mark Waterhouse, an EDPro who teaches the growth management course at the Economic Development Institute, passed on this interesting report on impact fees. By examining 67 counties in Florida, the authors analyze the connection between impact fees and job growth. They conclude that impact fees are generally a more efficient way to pay for infrastructure and that they do not slow job growth. Download the report. One caution: impact fees are easy to talk about, but difficult to administer. Many planning offices in rural counties are not equipped to deal with these complexities. Short of impact fees, you can do a lot with a thoughtful design of your development code or zoning ordinance. (You might want to check out the development code I've been implementing in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. Ascension is a rural parish that is experiencing fast growth. We have been using development agreements as an interim step to impact fees. Go to Ascension Plan) There are a lot of good resources on the web to get you up to speed on this stuff. Start with PlannersWeb, Smart Growth America, and Plantetizen. Today in our history of innovation... In 1935, a Patent Office issued a patent for the game of Monopoly to Charles Darrow of Pennsylvania. Darrow assigned the patent to Parker Brothers, Inc. The patent titled the game a "Board Game Appartus" and described it as "intended primarily to provide a game of barter, thus involving trading and bargaining" in which "much of the interest in the game lies in trading and in striking shrewd bargains." posted by Ed Morrison |		This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. links Some Background on EDPro Weblog The purpose of this weblog is to help economic development professionals -- EDPros -- keep up with the changes sweeping our profession. Strap on your goggles. It's a whole new game. There are no experts any more. The only place to learn about economic development is from other EDPros who are doing it. One other point: the prevaling approach (paradigm, if you like) in economic development is shifting from competition to collaboration. There are a lot of reaasons underlying this shift, but here's the important insight: You, your community, and your region will do better by collaborating and sharing information. So, spread the word...Share the knowledge. Tell a friend about EDPro Weblog. If you are using a news reader, here is the link to syndicate this site: Here's the link if you are a bloglines subscriber: Speaking and workshops on Open Source Economic Development As the idea of Open Source Economic Development starts spreading, more people are asking about it. Visit the I-Open web site to learn more. My colleagues and I are happy to explain the basic concepts in a talk or a workshop. E-mail Susan Alshuler if you'd like to learn more about workshops and speaking. Background on Ed Morrison Download some background information on me here.

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