BREWER – City councilors approved a cost-sharing formula for infrastructure improvements triggered by anticipated development on outer Wilson Street during their regular monthly meeting this week.

Officials also threw their support behind the proposed Interstate 395-Route 9 connector road, a project some believe will help ease traffic congestion and improve safety in the region.

According to City Hall officials, both decisions received the council’s unanimous support.

Impact fees are one-time payments collected from builders or developers to help pay their share of the costs of new public infrastructure such as road improvements and traffic control devices, wastewater, storm water and solid waste handling upgrades or water service expansions.

The city’s decision earlier this year to assess impact fees was tied to the boom in development projects along the Wilson Street corridor touched off by the city’s decision last summer to acquire more than 80 acres as the basis of a corporate center. Also at the time, the city began work on plans for a parallel access road that will open up some of the back land in the area that has escaped development for lack of access.

Projects that have come on line since then include the 72-acre health care park that Eastern Maine Healthcare is developing in the city’s corporate center and a 155,083-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter.

According to economic development director Drew Sachs, the impact fees in most cases would amount to about 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent of a typical development project’s total cost. Developers will be required to pay the fees before the city issues building permits and certificates of occupancy.

Over the past several months, Sachs said earlier, the city worked with Sain Associates of Bangor to develop fee formulas for the district, which encompasses the land bordered by Wilson Street, Parkway South, Interstate 395 and Chamberlain Street.

The idea behind the fees is to share costs with developers whose projects trigger a need for improved city infrastructure or services. Until now, local property taxpayers have footed the bill for such development-related infrastructure improvements.

The limited-access connector road city officials endorsed this week is being studied by a 20-member public advisory committee and a study team consisting of state and local transportation officials and consultants.

City officials endorsed the concept of the connector, which would help ease traffic congestion and improve highway safety in the area. They did not, however, express support for any particular route choice.