Brian Naranjo is right about something important: growth has costs.
Roads, schools, parks, libraries, public safety and other infrastructure do not materialize simply because someone builds a house or a development. Talbot County has a legitimate responsibility to make sure that new development contributes appropriately to the public costs associated with growth.
Where I respectfully diverge from Mr. Naranjo is in turning that legitimate policy question into a simple choice between developers paying and taxpayers paying.
That is not what the Talbot County Council was deciding on July 14.
Talbot County already imposes development impact fees. They are not new, and the Council was not considering eliminating them. According to the county’s FY2026 schedule, a new single-family detached home outside the municipalities carries a total impact fee of $9,355; the fee for other residential development is $6,800. Inside municipalities, the corresponding totals are $8,080 and $5,779. The county describes these as one-time payments intended to offset the financial impact that new development has on public infrastructure.
The July 14 question was narrower.
The county annually adjusts those existing fees using the Engineering News-Record Construction Cost Index so that the fees continue to reflect current construction costs. On July 14, Councilman Dave Stepp moved to waive that year’s adjustment. Council President Chuck Callahan seconded the motion. It failed on a 2–2 vote, leaving the existing adjustment in place.
Reasonable people can disagree about that vote.
What is harder to justify is describing it as though the Council was choosing whether developers or taxpayers would or should pay for infrastructure.
That is an appealing political formulation because it makes the issue sound wonderfully simple. But local government rarely works that way.
When a developer pays an impact fee, the money does not necessarily come exclusively from the developer’s profit. The cost may be reflected in the price of the land, the price of the finished house, the developer’s return, or some combination thereof. Ultimately, some portion may be borne by the buyer.
Indeed, Mr. Naranjo himself acknowledged this in his response to a recent commenter: developers can pass the cost on to the first-time buyer, who may incorporate it into a mortgage or pay it outright.
That is an important acknowledgment because it complicates the central premise of his argument.
It does not mean impact fees are bad.
Quite the contrary. Impact fees can be an entirely reasonable way to require development to contribute toward the additional public infrastructure it creates. The question is whether the fee is properly calculated, fairly allocated and producing the policy results Talbot County actually wants.
Those are harder questions than “Who pays?”
And they are questions the next Council should be asking.
For example: Is the current fee schedule still based on a sound analysis of the actual costs attributable to new development? Are different types of residential development paying amounts proportionate to the demands they place on public services? Does the structure of the fees encourage the kind of housing Talbot says it wants? Do annual inflation adjustments accurately reflect the underlying costs? And are there circumstances in which targeted relief makes more sense than either an across-the-board increase or an across-the-board waiver?
Those are not questions for slogans. They require evidence.
Mr. Naranjo has suggested that a nexus study, an analysis connecting the fees to the actual costs imposed by different types of development, would be a worthwhile place to start. I agree. That is a much more productive conversation than assigning motives to council members based on a single vote.
There is also a cautionary lesson in the way this debate has developed.
Once local policy disagreements become contests over who is “for the people” and who is “for developers,” there is a temptation to treat anyone who reaches a different conclusion as either captured by special interests or indifferent to the community.
That is not a particularly useful standard for governing.
A council member can believe that growth should pay its fair share while also believing that an automatic annual increase deserves scrutiny. A council member can support impact fees while questioning whether every fee is properly structured. And a council member can worry about the effect of fees on development without being indifferent to taxpayers.
Those positions are not mutually exclusive.
Nor does a council member’s profession, by itself, resolve the question. Chuck Callahan is a builder. Voters are entitled to know that and to consider whether a particular vote presents a conflict or raises legitimate questions about competing interests. But being a builder is not evidence, by itself, of improper motivation.
The broader record also resists the suggestion that every disagreement over development can be reduced to being pro-developer or anti-taxpayer.
In 2024, for example, the County Council, including Callahan and Stepp, unanimously approved the county’s purchase of approximately 120 acres of Poplar Hill Farm, an acquisition explicitly described as preserving open space and Critical Area while securing the property for future county use.
More recently, the Council reaffirmed that the county did not want the property rezoned and intended it to remain as acquired pending further public discussion.
That does not tell us whether Callahan and Stepp were right about the July 14 impact-fee adjustment.
It does tell us that their positions on growth and development are more complicated than a single vote can establish.
And that is precisely the point.
Talbot County has a genuine growth problem or, depending on one’s perspective, a growth opportunity accompanied by genuine costs. We need to decide what kinds of development we want, where we want it, how much infrastructure it requires, how much of that infrastructure should be paid for by new development, and how those costs ultimately affect housing affordability and existing residents.
Those decisions deserve more than a choice between “developers” and “taxpayers.”
They deserve numbers.
They deserve analysis.
They deserve a willingness to acknowledge that the person who pays an impact fee may not be the person who ultimately bears its economic cost.
And they deserve something else that seems increasingly rare in local politics: the recognition that people can disagree about the right answer without assuming that the other side must be acting in bad faith.
Mr. Naranjo is right to insist that growth should pay its fair share.
He is also right that Talbot County should be asking whether our existing impact-fee system is fair and properly calibrated.
But if we really want better government, the conversation should not end with “who pays?”
It should begin there.
Keith Alan Watts
Tilghman Island
PS. I currently serve on Talbot County’s Short Term Rental Review Board and former Chair of the Board.
6 Responses
I think you gave a more accurate and thoughtful response, Keith.
People need to understand how we create jobs for a children, how we finally get the healthcare you deserve (and no, a new hospital isn’t going to fix it), how we provide housing for those already here for can’t find it, how we continue to supply this ever growing 55+ community of retires who come here to “live on vacation” and suck all the services….but don’t add to our employee base….and then complain that we don’t offer what they want. People need to take a step back, need to educate themselves on the municipalities they live in (and the rules are similar for all places, so the ignorance of how local government works is appalling).
If we don’t grow a little, we are doomed to shrink. And if that is what people want, so be it, but don’t complain when we don’t have jobs available or housing. Don’t complain about traffic; the traffic is 75% of our workforce driving here to work FOR YOU. And side note, the largest contributor to traffic is the raceway to OC.
Educate yourselves. It is free, available, just requires your time as a citizen.
I read the article a couple times before reading Mr. Watt’s response, which caused me to once again read Mr. Naranjo’s opinion peace. It seems to me that this is a simple matter, should the impact fee be adjusted for (3%) inflation, or not. Obviously the developer would pay the fee, what ever it is, up front, how s/he deals with it going forward is their business. Almost everything in our lives is adjusted for inflation, this fee should be no different.
Thank you for a well presented piece, Mr. Watts. My remaining question is WHY Stepp and Callahan “moved to waive that year’s adjustment” in the first place. Did cost of construction go down and necessitate a downward adjustment to fees charged? Unlikely. So what was behind the move? Who would benefit directly from that outcome, had it passed? If the actual costs to the County stayed the same and the fees were reduced, then doesn’t the County foot the bill and isn’t that bill paid for with our taxes? It is a complicated issue and one that needs cool heads and deep thinkers. I appreciate you and Mr. Naranjo raising the questions and getting people to think about all that goes into making fact-based decisions. Unfortunately, based on their past performances, my level of trust for the two current councilmembers makes me take an even closer look at the who and why questions.
I am grateful to Keith Alan Watts for moving this debate forward in a thoughtful and constructive way. He and I agree on more than his letter suggests, and we agree on the parts that matter.
He is right that Talbot County already imposes impact fees, that the July 14 vote concerned the annual inflation adjustment rather than the fees themselves, and that the economic burden of a fee does not stop with the person who writes the check. Some of it shows up in the price of land, some in the price of the house, some in a buyer’s mortgage. I said as much in a comment thread earlier this month, and Mr. Watts is right to hold me to it.
He is also right that a council member’s profession does not settle the question of his motives. Voters are entitled to weigh it. They are not entitled to treat it as proof, and I don’t.
I would offer one correction, because it goes to the substance of my objection. My criticism of July 14 was never that two council members reached a different conclusion than I would have. It was how they reached it. A blanket waiver was moved and seconded within minutes. The staff study on offer was not taken up. Not a single number was put on the table. The county’s finance director warned, on the record, that without the adjustment “existing taxpayers end up subsidizing infrastructure needed for new development.” The motion failed 2–2.
Mr. Watts has written a sustained argument for evidence over slogans, and I agree with every word of it. I would note only that it is an argument against the July 14 motion, not for it. If part of an impact fee really does land on a first-time buyer — and it does — that is a reason to calibrate the fee carefully. It is not a reason to suspend the adjustment without a single figure in front of you.
So let me take his invitation seriously and be specific. If I am elected, I will move for a nexus study, and I will ask it to answer his questions: whether the current schedule still reflects the actual costs new development imposes; whether different types of housing pay in proportion to what they demand; whether the structure of the fees encourages the housing Talbot says it wants; and where targeted relief — for a nonprofit, or a farmer deeding a homesite to a child — makes better sense than an across-the-board waiver.
Those are good questions. They deserve answers before the next vote, not after.
I take Mr. Watts at his word that people can disagree without assuming bad faith. I would add only that they ought to disagree with the numbers in front of them.
Brian Naranjo St. Michaels
The writer is a candidate for Talbot County Council.
Thank you Mr Watts. A reasoned approach to a multifaceted issue.
One of the difficulties for us citizens is that our Council members rarely tell us “why” they voted the way they did. That leaves us guessing…and second-guessing. In this world of polarized politics and ad hominem attacks it would be helpful for all council members to give us the information upon which they based their votes. Maybe SCOTUS-like opinions and dissenting opinions would do, if not individual members’ explanations.
I am encouraged by the quality and tone of this discussion. I agree people need to educate themselves regarding how local and federal government works. Schools have not offered that education for decades. I think this stream of comments goes a good job of laying out the issues and need for facts. I am very impressed with Brian Naranjo’s pledge. He’s got my vote!