Mount Pleasant work session weighs including contour arena in recreation inventory, a move that would raise impact-fee ceiling

The Mount Pleasant work session on March 24 opened with a Sunrise Engineering presentation on how to count the contour arena in the city's recreation acreage inventory and what that would mean for impact fees. Chair said the council should review the options and asked staff for more detail.

Sunrise Engineering staff explained that including the contour arena in the inventory "bolsters your inventory" and increases the city's acres-per-capita recreational standard, which raises the statutory ceiling the city could charge in recreation impact fees. A staff member cautioned that the report "will set the maximum number" and that the council could choose to charge less than the ceiling but could not exceed it without a new study.

Why it matters: counting the arena would make Mount Pleasant appear to have more park acreage per resident, which can reduce the per-resident fee the report justifies or, conversely, raise the maximum legal ceiling the city can set. Staff and members discussed trade-offs, including that including the arena might preclude charging an additional impact fee specifically for that facility.

Council members did not take a decision at the meeting. Staff agreed to produce side-by-side comparisons showing the inventory and impact-fee calculations both with and without the contour arena, and to have Justin and Stephanie compile the inventory and run the numbers for the next work session. The sidewalk-inventory GIS demo was postponed to the next meeting because GIS staff were at a conference.