GRIFFIN: Is Growth Paying For Itself?

By Nampa Council Member Sebastian Griffin | Originally posted July 10, 2026 on Facebook

As I sit here doing some light reading of our nearly 600-page budget book tonight, the question keeps coming to my mind:

“Is growth actually paying for itself in Nampa?”

The honest answer is, no, not completely. I’ll be sure to cite to the pages I am looking at, just in case you don’t believe me.

That does not mean every new home is bad, and it does not mean Nampa should completely stop growing. But I do believe we need to slow residential growth significantly enough to let our roads, police services, parks, utilities, and deferred maintenance catch up.

Nampa’s proposed FY2027 General Fund budget is $72,591,102. That pays for Police, Facilities, Finance, IT, Legal, Code Enforcement, Public Works Administration, the Mayor and Council, and other basic City operations. Police alone accounts for $43,221,340, or about 59.5% of the entire General Fund budget (FY2027 Budget Book, p. 50).

Of the $72.59 million General Fund budget, $49,098,257 is personnel, $10,448,756 is operations and maintenance, $7,995,403 is transfers to other City functions, $2,804,815 is contingency funding, and $2,243,872 is capital spending (FY2027 Budget Book, p. 50).

You may also see $12,830,740 listed as “Transfers, Allocations, and Fund Balance.” That is not a $12.83 million operating deficit. A large portion of that amount is money moving between City funds to pay for shared services such as legal, finance, IT, facilities, and administration. (FY2027 Budget Book, p. 44).

The amount clearly identified in the detailed schedule as direct General Fund balance being used is $2,243,872, which matches the proposed General Fund capital spending for FY2027 (FY2027 Budget Book, pp. 50 and 113).

Developers and new construction do pay substantial impact fees. This post isn’t a war on developers.

For FY2027, Nampa proposes using $18,004,813 in impact-fee funding for growth-related infrastructure. That includes $8,732,500 for streets, traffic, and stormwater, $3,650,000 for parks, $3,250,000 for water, $2,167,313 for water renewal, and $205,000 for police capital needs (FY2027 Budget Book, p. 541).

That is real money, and it would be wrong to say developers pay nothing. The real problem is that impact fees generally help pay for new infrastructure and added capacity.

They do not fully cover the ongoing costs that come after the infrastructure is built. That’s why the discussion of mitigation fees has been had. This has been even more of a hot topic for me after witnessing first hand that our sister cities implementing them.

Once a new road, park, police vehicle, or public facility is added, the City still has to maintain it. We still have to pay officers, repair streets, mow parks, operate traffic signals, provide code enforcement, replace vehicles, and eventually replace aging infrastructure.

Those costs recur every year, and they frequently grow faster than the property-tax revenue generated by the new development.

The City’s own FY2027 budget says our primary revenues are not increasing as fast as our costs. The internal forecast estimates General Government revenues will grow by approximately 8.6% by 2030, while expenses will grow by approximately 9.7%, creating a projected gap of about 1.1 percentage points, or $1.9 million per year (FY2027 Budget Book, p. 27).

That may sound like a small percentage difference, but it compounds year after year. It means that even when City revenues are increasing, expenses are increasing faster. That is not sustainable forever, especially while we are already carrying a significant backlog of road, facility, and infrastructure maintenance.

Even smaller line items prove this, like the two new Ford F-550 street vehicles costing a combined $220,000 that are specifically identified as being “added for growth” (FY2027 Budget Book, p. 543).

The proposed FY2027 budget includes $2,243,872 in General Funds (taxpayer dollars) being used to offset funding gaps (FY2027 Budget Book, p. 50).

Obviously, it would not be fair to say every dollar of that is caused by new residential growth. Existing residents use our roads, parks, police services, and public facilities too.

So how much can we actually attribute to new growth, without a full impact study?

According to the City’s own budget, Nampa has grown from 100,200 residents in 2020 to an estimated 126,810 residents in 2026. That is an increase of 26,610 people, or approximately 26.6% population growth in just six years (FY2027 Budget Book, p. 13).

If roughly 26.6% of today’s population has been added since 2020, I think it is reasonable, at least as a starting point, to ask whether a similar share of our new capital costs can be attributed to serving that growth.

Applying 26.6% to the proposed $2,243,872 in General Fund capital spending equals approximately $596,869.

The budget also reports that Nampa permitted 1,030 new residential dwelling units in FY2025, which is the most recent completed annual figure available. It also notes that FY2026 residential permitting remained consistent with FY2025 and is expected to increase slightly in FY2027, but it does not provide a specific FY2027 projection (FY2027 Budget Book, pp. 16 and 413).

Using that 1,030-unit baseline, the calculation comes to approximately:

$596,869/1,030 homes is about $580 per newly built home.

So is approximately $600 per roof top the exact number? Not sure, however, I believe it is a reasonable estimate with the facts we have at hand.

The budget book does not include a full fiscal-impact study that measures the exact net cost of every new household. I strongly believe the City should conduct one so we can compare the actual revenue generated by each new residential unit against the costs for police, roads, parks, maintenance, facilities, and administration.

A complete stop to growth is not the answer. It could hurt housing availability, local businesses, employment, and responsible economic development. But continuing to approve residential growth faster than our infrastructure and revenues can support is also not responsible.

I believe the reasonable approach is to slow residential growth significantly, prioritize development where infrastructure already exists (infill projects), require appropriate developer participation, and give Nampa time to catch up on roads, police needs, parks, facilities, and deferred maintenance until the Legislature fixes the way new-growth revenue is calculated.

Growth should benefit Nampa’s existing residents, not leave them paying the remaining bill.

About Sebastian Griffin

Sebastian Griffin is the Nampa City Council member for District 6, a fifth-generation Idahoan, small business owner, and law student pursuing a joint J.D. and master's degree in accounting and taxation. He lives in Nampa with his wife, Macy.

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