The meeting began with a workshop led by Administrator Scott and Code Enforcement Director David Toomey on pending state housing legislation, followed by the regular council meeting. Key actions included rescheduling a public hearing on administrative code updates and advancing a draft amendment to the recreational vehicle ordinance. Councilors expressed concerns about state preemption of local zoning and infrastructure capacity.
Administrator Scott and Director Toomey reviewed several state bills, focusing on two key pieces:
LD 1498 – An act to limit municipal impact fees on housing development. The bill would require the city to encumber impact fees to a capital improvement project within one year of collection. Staff noted they are awaiting state rulemaking before proposing ordinance changes. Councilor Johnson questioned the bill’s necessity, and Councilor Edwards asked about currently unencumbered fees; staff stated no known unencumbered fees exist but will perform an internal audit. Annual impact fee revenue is roughly $9,000 per new house on sewer and $3,124 per new house on septic, with about 50–60 new houses per year.
LD 1829 – An act to build housing for Maine families and attract workers by amending density laws. Key provisions: removes sprinkler requirements for accessory dwelling units (ADUs); allows buildings to exceed height limits by 14 feet for affordable housing; reduces minimum lot size to 5,000 square feet in growth areas connected to public sewer; mandates a density of 1,250 square feet per dwelling unit citywide (currently 1,500 in downtown); exempts planning board review for structures with four or more dwelling units; removes owner-occupancy requirement for ADUs; revises the definition of a subdivision from three to five dwelling units; and caps maximum lot size at 20,000 square feet (down from as high as 80,000 in the RC zone). Compliance is required by July 1, 2027. Councilor Johnson strongly criticized the state’s approach, calling it an infringement on local zoning authority and questioning whether the changes would actually produce affordable housing. Councilor Hewitt raised concerns about infrastructure capacity for water and sewer. Staff acknowledged that long-term capital plans are based on existing zoning and may not account for the potential density increases. Next steps include an internal staff tabletop exercise in January, a legal presentation from consulting attorney Phil Saucier, and drafting red-line ordinance amendments for council, the Long-Range Planning Committee, and the Planning Board.
Other bills highlighted: LD 427 (limiting off-street parking to one space per dwelling unit in growth areas), LD 970 (allowing housing in commercial districts), and LD 1926 (workforce housing density bonuses). Staff will continue monitoring state rulemaking.
Councilor Johnson moved to reschedule the public hearing on proposed updates to Chapter 4, Article 5 (Departments and Divisions) from December 8 to December 15, 2025, because the required notice was not published in time. The motion passed 6–0.
Councilor Edwards presented a draft amendment to allow temporary 14-day permits for occupying an RV on private property (e.g., for visiting family). Key conditions include permit application, vehicle standards, and compliance monitoring. During discussion:
The meeting adjourned at 7:06 p.m. by unanimous vote (6–0).
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Soccer City Council meeting for Monday, December eighth, twenty twenty-five. First off, before we start the regular meeting, we do have a workshop this evening, and we do have Administrator Scott with us as well as Director Toomey to go over some housing initiatives and bills before we start our housing action plan coming up. So I'm glad to hear have a code enforcement director David Toomey here with me this evening. And then we um provided some info at a September 22nd council joint meeting with Planning Board, and again October 6 Council joint meeting with long-range planning committee. And we also did have a legislative update from the legislators directly uh a couple months ago, I believe. So the major bills here that we're attracting are um those listed in bold. Um perhaps the two most impactful here will be LD 1498 as well as a LD 1829. LD 1498, um, an act to limit municipal impact fees on housing development. It's about halfway down your page. Will require us to take a look at how we're collecting impact fees today, um, how we're using them, how we're gonna be uh uh encumbering them into our capital improvement plan through this budget season and going forward. And we'll also have additional data from the state as an impact fee report was due to the state legislature in December. So we're tracking that pretty closely. That one could have some impacts as to how we collect impact fees, when we collect impact fees, and um how they're used as far as the timeline for use of those fees. You may have questions. I won't have all answers, but I'm happy to take any questions specifically to that, and I'll ask Dave if he has anything else to add here. No, it's just gonna be more keeping track of what we have and when we spend it, so we make sure it's not there for too long. So we'll need to make sure that we follow the new state um law requires us to encumber the impact fee within one year. So we will be looking to encumber the impact fee to the capital improvement program, make sure that it fits well into programming, and then look for any updates from the state as they come available. Great. Thank you. Anyone have any questions or comments? Councilor Johnson? Thank you. Um so that wouldn't allow the municipality to kind of squirrel away an impact fee put towards a project later down the road. It would. We are reading this as they just have to be encumbered to a project within one year or encumbered to a capital plan project within one year. Thanks for clarification. And I should just put the disclaimer on all this that Dave and I are waiting for rulemaking from the state on a lot of these. So this is as far as what we know as of today. And it's actually one of the reasons why we don't have draft red lines for you yet, is we are waiting for the state rulemaking process on some of these before we make changes to our ordinance. Dave is keeping tabs on that through his association work as far as um any red lines that come through and working on comments with the building officers association. Thank you. Anyone else? Yep. Councilor Edwards. Do we have any uh impact fees at this time that are not encumbered? Um I wouldn't say that we have any impact fees that are necessarily not encumbered. Um we collect impact fees for specific purposes. But uh we have to do that analysis in-house to see how things need to change if things need to change, and making sure that we're following the requirements for the timelines. Right. Thank you. Council Arnold. What's the current impact fee revenue that we get per year? Do we have an idea of just what the average number is? I don't have it for the whole um community because we collect impact fees for various items. However, per building permit, um, it's about it's about $9,000 if it's on sewer and $3,124 if it's out of on septic. Is that per lot or per project? Per new house. For a new house. And we do about 50 houses a year, 50 to 60.