City of Houston 2023Legislative Report

Land Use

Bill Sponsors / Authors:

Cody Harris   Rep. Cody Harris
  R - Palestine

Bryan Hughes   Sen. Bryan Hughes
  R - Mineola

 

Supporting Documents / Links:

Land Use GraphicHouse Bill 1526 – Parkland Dedication

A parkland dedication fee is a fee assessed at the time of subdivision platting by the Planning and Development Department for new residential development to develop new parks surrounding that development. Fees are collected at the building permit stage.

  • These fees are used to acquire new parkland near those developments and any construction and maintenance required for those parks.

House Bill 1525 by Representative Cody Harris mandates a parkland dedication fee structure for cities over 800,000 people in population. Those cities include Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth.

The bill preempts a city from assessing a parkland dedication fee on any commercial development, which the City of Houston did not do.

Importantly, the bill drastically limits the amount of park dedication fees which may be charged to multi-family developments—which are often the people who utilize parks more, due to not having a yard. It similarly limits assessment of these fees against hotels or motels, which the City of Houston did not do.

The bill also allows a landowner to request a determination of what the parkland fee would be, which fee would be valid for two years, regardless of any increase in land costs, and the estimate must be made within 30 days of the political subdivision receiving the completed request.

A landowner may release the political subdivision from that estimate.

Additionally, the bill greatly restricts the amount a city can charge.  While there are different calculations based on multi-family, hotel, and single-family development styles, as well as different factors for suburban, urban, or commercial center areas within a city, the bill doesn’t account for the variability in what local real estate prices are—meaning the city will likely get far less than what it would take to acquire land, leaving the remainder to be paid for out of general tax dollars or other sources.

This new state mandate does not take into consideration the differences between city density, park availability, land availability, and what the community is asking for in park amenities.The City of Houston works with developers to ensure that every person across the City of Houston, no matter area, income level, or housing, will have access to greenspace in their neighborhood. New development means that more people will be moving into that area, therefore increasing the strain on existing parks, if any. Fees work to ensure that the new people moving in will also have access to parkland.

Houston’s current method of calculating the amount of land to be dedicated or the fee in lieu of dedication is simple and has been effective. Since the program was adopted in 2007, developers can easily determine the amount of land required to be dedicated or choose to pay a flat rate of $700 per dwelling unit, a tiny fraction of the cost of most land in Houston, and already vastly lower than other cities in the area.

The passed version of the bill:

  • Brackets the chapter to only multifamily and hotel/motel projects, and not to single family home developments.
  • Requires that a city develop a parkland dedication determination when a landowner requests one, and that determination remains tied to the land for 2 years unless the property owner releases the City’s determination.
  • Creates a dwelling unit factor of .005 for multifamily units, and .004 for hotel/motel units, but excludes any affordable dwelling units from the count.
  • Creates a density factor that may not be less than 1 for a suburban area, a 4 for an urban area, and 40 for a central business district.
  • Allows a landowner to appeal the fee determination.

This bill passed and will go into effect September 1, 2023.