Bill Sponsors / Authors:
Rep. Cody Harris
R - Palestine
Sen. Bryan Hughes
R - Mineola
Supporting Documents / Links:
House 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.
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:
This bill passed and will go into effect September 1, 2023.