Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"There are two economic issues here. First, there's the issue of whether impact fees are needed. Do you need to have new homes pay more above what they would normally pay in property taxes and other taxes for the services they require? There's a debate over this, quite frankly. Different studies come to different conclusions. It depends on the types of taxes that you're considering, the size of the new costs, etc. So that's really an unsettled debate.

"The second issue is if you do have impact fees, what's going to be the impact of those fees on the housing market? Now, clearly these fees are going to increase the cost to someone buying a home. Typically, at least part of that fee, even if it's paid by the developer, is going to be passed on to the buyer. So then the question is: What does the buyer get for that fee? If the funds go to, say, general spending, if they don't actually see where the money gets spent, then I think what you'll see is that purchases of homes will drop because people will see a higher price for a house - they don't get anything for that higher price - so we'll see some reduction in home buying. On the other hand, if the money from the fees goes to a public service that the buyers can easily see, like widening a road next to their new subdivision, then - and if they value that - then you can actually find that impact fees don't adversely affect purchases because people are saying, 'Alright, I'm paying this fee but I'm getting something back that I value.' Therefore, they're not going to change their perception on whether to buy that house or not."