At a recent city council meeting, a question was asked about the city’s development impact fees. Impact fees are commonly-charged by cities and counties to new developments to pay for the construction or expansion of off-site capital improvements that are necessitated by and benefit the new development. For example, Menlo Park charges a transportation impact fee to mitigate the impact of development on traffic in the city. Other impact fees include construction impact, storm drainage, recreation in-lieu, and below market rate housing in-lieu. Use of impact fees is governed by the Mitigation Fee Act (Assembly Bill 1600) and imposes certain requirements on agencies that charge these impact fees. Each year, a report on the collection and utilization of impact fees is required, and this report is typically presented to Council in December. Last year, applicable reports went to City Council Dec. 16 (reports #14-201 and #14-207).