Spotsylvania County Fiscal & Economic Impact Model
Spotsylvania County, VA
Spotsylvania County retained RKG to create a fiscal and economic development model that would help guide the community in decisions related to real estate and economic development. The resulting model projects the potential impact of user-specified development proposals upon public revenues and expenditures (fiscal impacts), as well as jobs, wages, and output (economic impacts). The model calculates these impacts based on an array of inputs that capture development type, location, value, and other variables.
Using realistic, locally relevant outputs, the model accounts for local conditions including market performance (i.e. vacancy rates), market activity (i.e. captured retail spending by business type) and market consumption (i.e. school-aged children added to the community). These factors are key drivers of the estimated fiscal and economic impact calculations, and are what differentiates impacts by land use.
RKG's work provided the County with a flexible, adjustable tool to evaluate new development proposals and to test developer claims of fiscal and economic benefits. The county has since utilized the model in a number of evaluation processes, including rezoning decisions and special use cases.
Photo Source: Spotsylvania Courthouse Village