Lancaster, Texas - City Development Fees

Fee Summary

Impact Fees

Source: City of Lancaster Master Fee Schedule FY 2025-2026 (effective October 1, 2025), Article 10 Utility Related Fees (Sec 10.1200 Water Impact Fee, Sec 10.1300 Sewer Impact Fee, Sec 10.1400 Roadway Impact Fee), citing impact-fee Ordinance 2021-07-27; per-service-unit collection rates from the City Engineering Impact Rates Per Service Unit table. Lancaster operates its own municipal water and wastewater utilities and levies water, wastewater, and roadway impact fees under Texas Local Government Code Chapter 395. The total impact fee for a project equals its number of service units times the per-service-unit rate below.

Water and sewer impact fees are capital-recovery fees keyed to the water meter size and living unit equivalent (LUE): a single-family connection on a standard 3/4-inch meter (1.0 service unit) pays $1,532 for water and $1,165 for wastewater. Roadway impact fees are assessed per service unit by service area and land use. This is a genuine, city-administered Chapter 395 impact-fee schedule, notable for an I-35E logistics and distribution corridor city where warehouse and industrial projects can generate significant service-unit counts. The Master Fee Schedule imposes the fees and cites the ordinance rate tables; the dollar magnitudes above are the adopted collection rates published in the City Engineering Impact Rates Per Service Unit table. These impact fees are distinct from the utility tap charges below.

Zoning and Plat Application Fees

Source: City of Lancaster Master Fee Schedule FY 2025-2026 (effective October 1, 2025), Article 11 Planning and Zoning Related Fees (Sec 11.300 to 11.600) and Article 17 Development Fees. The zoning, variance, and plat application fees below are captured from that schedule.

Authority: City of Lancaster Development Services (Planning, Building Inspections). The fees above confirm the zoning and platting fee family for this jurisdiction. Preliminary and final plat base amounts are set by acreage tier in Section 11.400 of the schedule; confirm the specific tier applicable to a given project directly with the City.

Water and Sewer Tap Fees

Source: City of Lancaster Master Fee Schedule FY 2025-2026 (effective October 1, 2025), Article 10 Utility Related Fees, Sec 10.700(d). Lancaster runs its own municipal water and sewer utility. The tap and meter charges below are separate from the Chapter 395 impact fees above; a new connection pays both.

Authority: City of Lancaster Public Works (Utilities). Residential water taps larger than 2 inches, and sewer taps larger than 4 inches or deeper than 10 feet, require a bonded utility contractor with engineering plans and a construction permit rather than a flat city tap fee. Lancaster does not operate a municipal natural-gas utility. Monthly water and sewer service rates and volumetric charges are recurring billing charges, not development fees, and are excluded here.

Coverage Notes - What This Page Does Not Cover

Per ZoneFee's Partial-Verified Publication Standard, the items below were either not itemized in full on this page or are levied outside the City fee schedule. They are disclosed here rather than estimated, paraphrased from a non-official source, or omitted silently. These items remain under limited-coverage review until any remaining gaps are closed from official sources.

Currency caveat

The impact fees, zoning and plat application fees, and utility tap fees on this page derive from the City of Lancaster Master Fee Schedule for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 (effective October 1, 2025 annual update) and the City Engineering Impact Rates Per Service Unit table. Fee schedules change, and the City rotates its document-center file numbers when a new fiscal-year schedule is posted. Confirm current amounts directly with the City of Lancaster before relying on them.

Impact fee rate sourcing

The Master Fee Schedule imposes the water, wastewater, and roadway impact fees and cites the ordinance rate tables, but does not reprint the per-service-unit dollar amounts. Those amounts come from the City Engineering Impact Rates Per Service Unit table, which presents adopted and proposed collection-rate columns; the figures on this page are the adopted collection rates. The total impact fee for a project is the number of service units times the per-service-unit rate, so a project's actual impact fee depends on its meter size, land use, and service area.

Special district fees

The full 63-page, 17-article City of Lancaster fee schedule was searched and contains no city-administered special-district line item: no Public Improvement District (PID) application or administration fee, no tax increment reinvestment zone (TIRZ) fee, and no municipal management district fee. Any special-district assessments in or around Lancaster would be levied by the district under Texas Local Government Code Chapter 372 (PID) or Chapter 311 (TIRZ), not through the City fee schedule. Closed-search outcome: no city-administered special-district fee to report.

Proffers

Cash proffers are a Virginia statutory instrument under Virginia Code Section 15.2-2303.4 with no Texas counterpart. Texas exactions run through Local Government Code Chapter 212 (subdivision and development) and Chapter 395 (impact fees); Lancaster's water, wastewater, and roadway impact fees sit under Chapter 395. Closed-search outcome: this fee family does not apply to this jurisdiction.

Fee Authorities

See the impact fees guide for how Texas Local Government Code Chapter 395 works, and the Texas hub for other jurisdictions covered by ZoneFee. Nearby covered jurisdictions include Dallas, Cedar Hill, DeSoto, and Grand Prairie.

Sources