Washington’s City Council, during its meeting Monday, changed a proposal to suspend certain fees related to new water and sewer service, including limiting the number of times the builder of residential structures could take advantage of the waiver policy.

City Manager Bobby Roberson, in an effort to stimulate residential growth in the city, proposed waiving the city’s water and sewer impact fees for a period of six months beginning July1, 2016 and ending Dec. 31, 2016. Waiving those fees would save someone building a residence $920, according to the proposal. Currently, the Public Works Department charges impact fees for water and sewer taps. The impact fee for a residential water tap is $332. The impact fee for a residential sewer tap is $588.

If the impact fees were waived for six months, residential customers would continue to pay $800 for a water tap and $1,000 for a sewer tap. Currently, a residential customer pays $2,720 water tap, sewer tap, water tap impact and sewer tap impact fees. Impact fees are used to pay for infrastructure improvements, not for operating the water and sewer systems.

“It is a suggestion. We, meaning the city of Washington, when it comes to single-family dwellings inside of our jurisdiction, basically we have only two subdivisions that are showing new-construction permits,” Roberson said. Providing incentives for people to build single-family dwellings would result in a new house on the city’s tax rolls and revenue from water and sewer taps and water, sewer and electricity usage, he said.

Councilman Doug Mercer expressed concern that the city could lose a significant amount of revenue by implementing the six-month suspension.

“My concern … is if you’re talking a single lot on Ninth Street, Main Street or wherever, that’s one thing, but is someone comes along with a 30-lot subdivision — a completely open field — you’re talking a substantial amount of revenue we’re not going to be getting,” Mercer said. “That revenue is reserved for future improvements to the system. Like I say, a single lot does not bother me, but a subdivision of 10, 20 or 30 houses is a major concern for me.”

Mayor Mac Hodges suggested a cap of five houses for someone building multiple houses.

“You can do it anyway you want to do it,” Roberson said. “We sort of need to think out of the box. That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

Mercer suggested that an approved subdivision “of not more than five (new houses) would be exempted from the tap fees, but more than five would pay all fees.” That suggestion received support from the entire council.

Council member William Pitt said, “I’m assuming that this is going to be promoted well.”

“It is. … We haven’t gone to the building community and advocated this position. I didn’t want to do that until the council came to some idea about what their expectations were. As soon as we draw it up, we’ll go ahead and move forward on it,” Roberson said.