A couple of weeks ago the Clark County Board of Commissioners took a step similar to that of Gresham and announced a “Fee Holiday” for certain types of land use applications. You can find a copy of the Clark County Ordinance here by scrolling down and looking under Clark County Ordinance 2010-10-04. This is a concerted effort by Clark County to entice businesses to come to Clark County or expand at a time when development applications have plummeted. The “fee holiday” is in addition to extensions grated for subdivisions, site plans, conditional use permits and other land use applications.
Essentially this ordinance waives certain development fees on qualified development application from now until 12 pm December 30, 2011. Your development application must either be located in one of County Focused Public Investment Areas, such as Highway 99, the Discovery Corridor, WSU Research Park, NE 117th Avenue, or Barberton/St.Johns or you must use the Chelatchie Prairie Railroad Line or finally create a certain amount of jobs not currently present in the County. In addition, the ordinance potentially calls for the waiver of Traffic Impact Fees. But this waiver appears to be contingent on amendments to Clark County’s Capital Facilities and Comprehensive Plan.
We have heard rumblings that the City of Vancouver is also considering this approach.