At its July 14 meeting, the Talbot County Council faced a narrow question: whether to continue the annual inflation adjustment to impact fees — the fees that make developers, not existing taxpayers, pay for the roads, schools, parks, and libraries development requires.
Initially, Councilman Dave Stepp raised what sounded like a technical permit-timing concern. Then came his precipitous leap: he moved to waive the entire year’s impact fee adjustment for every fee payer. He did not take up the staff study on offer, which would have let the Council understand the pros and cons. Attempting to slip one by the Council and the voters, Stepp pushed a sweeping change without examination, without a single number on the table, and over the county finance director’s warning of what it would cost. Council President Callahan promptly seconded. Only the no votes of Pete Lesher and Lynn Mielke — a 2–2 deadlock — kept growth’s costs off taxpayers’ backs.
Why revisit this now? At the close of the August 11 meeting, Stepp took issue with my August 7 commentary on that vote. Not naming me, he called my characterization a misquote — “100% false. A lie” — and urged anyone interested in “the actual truth” to “go back and watch the county meeting videos.”
Good advice. I went back to the video (again) and the newly released official transcript. Here is what the July 14 record shows:
- The county’s finance director: the annual adjustment “is not a fee increase in the traditional sense”; without it, “existing taxpayers end up subsidizing infrastructure needed for new development.”
- Her hypothetical: a developer rushing an application to “put in ten lots” ahead of the adjustment — “a significant amount of development impact fees.”
- Stepp, engaging that hypothetical directly: “I would think you use the developer with ten lots… I can see a carve-out for something like that. It just, it seems a little unfair if we ask this of folks beforehand…”
Those are the meeting’s words, not mine.
Stepp is correct on one point, and I am happy to acknowledge it: “unfairness to developers” was my short-hand summary, not a verbatim quote. His actual words appear above; readers can judge for themselves. And I am not alone in reading them that way. The Star Democrat — the paper to which Stepp took his grievance — opened its own account of the dispute by describing the July motion as an effort “to pause an annual increase in impact fees for developers.” If that summary is a lie, he has more than one liar to accuse.
Then came the walk-back. Stepp now, a month after his attempt at a fast move, says his concern is not only for developers, but also nonprofits and private citizens. Tuesday’s “lie” had become an acknowledgment that developers were part of his concern — all I ever wrote. The nonprofits and farmers appeared in Stepp’s public remarks: not on July 14, when he moved the waiver and spoke of ten-lot developers, but a month after his motion failed and days after he was called out.
But the dispute was never about a phrase. It was about a vote. As Council Vice President Lesher put it in his remarks to the Star Democrat: relief for nonprofits and affordable housing has merit, “but that’s not the decision that was in front of us.” The decision was a blanket waiver, voted in minutes without analysis. Targeted, studied relief for a nonprofit or a farmer deeding a homesite to family? I would welcome it. A month later, where is the study, the proposal, the fix? Nowhere. What remains is Stepp’s motion to make taxpayers pick up growth’s tab. Period.
Stepp says the truth is on the tape. On that, we agree. I did what he recommended: I went back to the tape and the official transcript. I encourage every voter to do the same.
The Stepp two-step is unconvincing: (1) play the victim — profess to be misunderstood, demean observers, blame the media; (2) walk back what the record shows by obfuscating and raising issues never before mentioned. He tried to slip one by, was stopped by Mielke and Lesher, and is bent out of shape because somebody called him on it. Talbot deserves better.
Brian Naranjo
St. Michaels
The writer is a candidate for Talbot County Council.
8 Responses
Impact fees are a bourgeois levy on the reproduction of labor-power. Capital folds the charge into the commodity price of shelter, where it is paid from proletarian wages.
Talbot’s dictatorship of the bourgeoisie deploys local power to exclude the proletariat from its enclaves. Capital appropriates surplus value; labor pays admission.
Mary —
Thanks for commenting, but I’m not down with the Marxist-Leninist dialectic interpretation of this matter. Rather extreme to me, and I’ve seen first-hand on my first two in Ukraine about 2 years after it obtained independence from the Soviet Union. You can’t believe the kinds of impacts levied on the general Ukrainian public that seven decades of Soviet rule.
A much more pedestrian logic is sufficient for me: if one creates an impact, one ought to pay to cover that impact. Developers place a load on the county that they should be prepared to mitigate; of course, they pass it on to the first-time buyer who likely rolls it into their mortgage or pays for it outright, something that makes sense to me for newcomers to the county who place new demands on the county. Sure, there are probably better ways to do this kind of thing, but the basic principle holds.
I appreciate your contribution.
BRN
Excellent Article, Mr Naranjo! I always enjoy reading about someone getting caught, trying to pull a fast one on the public, and then trying to walk it back knowing all to well, he was called on it!
I couldn’t agree more that developers should pay impact fees, including the cost of roads when an area is developed by them. The County should not pay for roads and pass it to the taxpayer.
I just adore reading The Spy! Where else can you find such lively and critically germane “discussion”? Thank you all.
Mr. Steppe’s strategy in dealing with the issue is exactly like the strategy of Donald Trump and his sycophants. That is not surprising since the Talbot County Republicans are so bent on representing Trump’s values that they don’t care about the taxpayers in Talbot.
Mr. Steppe and Mr. Callahan have very short memories. They have clearly forgotten what happened with Lake Side. Over two thousand new homes approved for a developer who contributed not one cent to cover increased expenses for road maintenance, schools, and increased costs for first responders. The developer will take his money and run and everyone in Talbot will pay the expenses. Apparently this was only 10 homes, but the principle of favoring developers over citizens is the same.
Mr. Naranjo has earned my respect for both the analysis he’s presented here and in his previous letter, and for the fair-handed, fact-based way he’s dealt with those who’ve expressed opposing views.
Mr. Steppe, by contrast, fails to provide any analysis for his position that developers shouldn’t pay for the public infrastructure impacts they cause, but rather, Talbot County taxpayers should.
And Mr. Steppe is apparently unwilling to take another legitimate view on policy into consideration without resorting to personal attacks and name calling. Besides being just plain wrong on the policy, these are hardly the qualities one would expect of a Country Council member.
Thanks to Mr. Naranjo for taking the time to keep citizens informed. Also a thank you to the Talbot Spy.
To The Editor
I read Brian Naranjo’s excellent LOI “On Impact Fees” and the intelligent discussion that followed – with the exception of the Marxist/Leninist/Engels grounded commentary from Mary Smith. I fail to see the relevance of Ms. Smith’s comment to the issues posed by Mr. Naranjo or the actions (or lack thereof) of the current Talbot County Council. David Stepp is certainly not a fellow traveler, I am curious if the Spy’s editors know the Bona Fide’s of “Mary Smith”? I have seen her comment on other LOIs, with which I disagree, but prior comments have been more relevant to the issue at hand and less inflammatory. If Mary Smith is indeed a real person, I applaud the exercise of her First Amendment Rights and her knowledge of a largely discredited school of political thought. If on the other hand, Mary Smith is an alias or a Bot, it would cast a shadow on all the genuine content on your excellent site. Can the Editors offer the readership any assurances that “Mary Smith” is a real person? Just curious.