City has plans to lower fees for housing developers

Lebanon city staff is working on a proposal to spur housing development in the city. Public Works Director Richard Shockley, at Monday night’s City Council meeting, presented a construction cost proposal to temporarily lower infrastructure costs for developers. Currently the developer can construct their own streets at their costs or participate in the city subdivision improvement program. The proposed subdivision improvement program would suspend the current code for a period of time and reduce costs by developers, he said. City Administrator Michael Schumacher said the intent would be to spur additional housing growth to bring in more workers for employers in the city. Schumacher said he talked to a local appraiser who felt strongly that high infrastructure costs were holding back growth in the city. “By the time you do the infrastructure and the developer incurs all that cost, they’re just not able to build a house at an affordable price,” he said For more on this story see Wednesday's LCR.