The Scarborough Town Council lowered an impact fee for improvements to the Dunstan intersection and rejected adopting a similar fee to pay improvements to the Oak Hill intersection last week.

Councilors reduced the Dunstan fee that was in place from $1,941 to $1,471 for each additional car coming through the intersection at peak travel times. A motion by Councilor Carol Rancourt to exempt individual single-lot developments was also approved.

The fee at Dunstan is paid by anyone who creates a new development generating more traffic at the intersection to compensate for the impact. The purpose of the fee is to collect money in order pay for future traffic improvements at the intersection.

Prior to voting Feb. 7, the council held public hearings on impact fees for both intersections.

Councilor Sylvia Most called the ordinance that was in place “fair as written.” She sided with Councilor Patrick O’Reilly, but the amendment passed on a 5-2 vote.

The other issue before the council regarded the implementation of an impact fee at the Oak Hill intersection, where Route 1 crosses Black Point Road. The fee proposed in the ordinance was $820 per car trip at the peak hour, which is around 5 p.m.

In a 4-3 vote, the ordinance was not approved, with Councilors Ronald Ahlquist, Shawn Babine, Carol Rancourt and Richard Sullivan all voting against it.

Councilors opposed the ordinance for different reasons. Councilors Sullivan, Babine and Rancourt claimed an expensive project to improve traffic at the intersection would not be necessary and thus neither would the fee.

Sullivan suggested looking at other options for improving traffic, such as adjusting the traffic lights and opening the back entrance to the high school for students, before creating a fee. Sullivan said he didn’t believe there would be much more land to develop on Black Point Road that would affect traffic at the intersection. “Any growth there would be very minimal,” he said.

Though Rancourt admitted it was a “personal impact,” because she lives in the Oak Hill area, her knowledge of the intersection led her to believe the possible traffic project that was driving the fee proposal was “an ill-conceived plan.”

Most and O’Reilly thought the proposed fee was not high enough and that developers should be expected to pay more. Most and O’Reilly also thought that the ordinance should be retroactive, so that projects that have already been to the planning board would pay the fee as well. Most said that it made “absolutely no sense” for those projects – such as Cabela’s and Eastern Village – not to pay the fee, adding that the developers were “well aware that an impact fee was coming.” O’Reilly made a motion to amend the ordinance so that it would be retroactive. The motion failed on a 4-3 vote.

Most, who said that she was “uncomfortable with the present text” of the ordinance, would vote for the ordinance as a whole because she would rather see an impact fee with which she didn’t agree than no fee at all. O’Reilly agreed, saying he wouldn’t “throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Councilor Jeff Messer said he was “on the fence” about the issue, but ultimately voted to approve the ordinance.