The Maryville-Alcoa Homebuilders Association, in the form of their president Bob Reed, fought tooth and nail against the concept of a developer fee or impact fee. Even vowed to defeat the extremely watered down Adequate Facilities Tax in Nashville where the homebuilder lobby has great influence over our state legislators. And they pretty well did, although the watered down version could and should still be brought to the commission table. I know that I'll never vote for a realty transfer fee or a wheel tax on a referendum until a facilities or developer fee is implemented. That is the real need. Sorry if that raises some hackles, but just call me Stubborn. Sick of paying to make other folks rich.

Dave Bennett actually seemed for doing something along these lines back when these discussions were going on in the county a couple of years ago. And then there were those astronomical figures from the attorney for the Knoxville MPO (Stephen Wise). He said something like that the average house built in these parts takes close to 20 years to repay in property taxes what it costs the community in infrastructure/services. The average subdivision takes approximately FORTY years.

Someone needs to put together another Private Act to implement a developer fee and let's get it going again.