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The Salt Lake City Council voted unanimously Tuesday evening to extend the municipality's year-old moratorium on impact fees for buildings, a pause that most likely will stretch to mid-March.

The city loses an estimated $500,000 per month during the moratorium and lost a total $7.1 million on the 12-month fee suspension that was set to lapse Wednesday.

The council is tentatively slated to hold a public hearing on a new impact-fee rate schedule Nov. 15. Council Chairman James Rogers said a new ordinance could pass by mid-December. Once adopted, however, the new regulations cannot be implemented for 90 days, according to Utah law.

The moratorium extension — like the original timeout — requires that a building permit be issued by the deadline before a builder or developer is eligible for a fee waiver.

Predicting the end of the moratorium, council members criticized Mayor Jackie Biskupski last month for not proposing a new fee schedule until mid-October.

But the mayor has said her administration did not receive a final draft of a consultant's recommendation until mid-September. The administration, it says, then sought public input and forwarded its plan as quickly as it could.

The original draft from the consulting firm Lewis, Young, Robertson and Burningham Inc. was completed in late June. Biskupski's administration gave recommendations to the consultant. A second draft was forwarded to the mayor in September.

The report suggested that impact fees could jump by as much as 62 percent on new single-family homes. Fees on new apartment units would rise a more modest 5 percent. The council also saw the draft study in September.

A fee structure proposed by the mayor would raise impact fees on single-family structures from $3,459 to $5,732. Fees for units in multifamily buildings would rise from $3,284 to $3,538. They would drop for commercial buildings, from $3,630 to $1,986. And office units' would fall from $2,680 to $502.

The study forecasts that Utah's capital (population 193,000) will add as many as 28,208 residents over the next 10 years. That estimate is based on the construction of 545 single-family houses and 7,064 apartments; it also projects that growth in commercial construction will continue through 2025.

At an Oct. 25 meeting, council members asked David Litvack, Biskupski's deputy chief of staff, on a half-dozen occasions why the mayor had not proposed an interim policy for impact fees from Nov. 2 until a new ordinance could be implemented. Litvack refused to answer.

On Tuesday, Mike Reberg, the city's director of community and neighborhoods, told the council that Biskupski's administration had not taken a position on the moratorium extension.

"We will support and act on any decision you make," Reberg said.

The moratorium was proposed by former Mayor Ralph Becker. Last year, as impact fees were piling up, the city was having difficulty spending the money as outlined by Utah law. If not spent within six years, the moneys must be returned.

The 12-month suspension was intended to give city officials time to develop a better strategy to spend funds earmarked to keep services from declining during periods of growth.

On Tuesday, Fred Philpot, the author of the consultant report, briefed the council. He explained how the fee schedule was calculated.

The council, however, could decide to change the rate structure. Rogers has said that Salt Lake City has little space for single-family-dwelling construction but is undergoing an apartment-building boom. The majority of future impacts on services — such as fire, police, parks and roads — would come from multifamily dwellings, he said.

The council voted 6-0 for the extension; council member Andrew Johnston was absent.