Do Elected Officials Need to have Engineering and Financial Degrees?
by David B. Hartvigsen (Published in the Utah Water Users Association, July 1999) Earlier this year, the Utah Supreme Court issued a decision in a case that focused on the assessment of impact fees by local governments on new water and sewer hookups. In that case, Home Builders Association v. American Fork City, the association alleged that the city failed to comply with certain court-mandated requirements in adopting its impact fee ordinances. Those court-mandated requirements are commonly called the “Banberry factors” because they were first set forth in 1981 in the Utah Supreme Court’s decision in Banberry Development Corp. v. South Jordan City. The association argued that the impact fees it was required to pay were illegal and should be refunded because it learned that the mayor and city council did not consider any of the Banberry factors when they adopted the city’s water and sewer impact fee ordinances. In fact, the city officials were unable to describe how the city had arrived
