By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Home builders might have to pay $5,100 extra to construct a house in KC, under a plan being reviewed by a citizens task force. Good idea, bad timing.

The Water Services Utility Funding Task Force commendably wants new growth in KC to pay for some of the city's costs to build new water and sewer lines.

The so-called System Development Charge under review is used in fast-growing cities such as Olathe ($5,145 a house) and Lee's Summit ($4,762 a house).

KC's charge could be $5,125 per house, according to a consultant hired by the city.

And that fee could be lower, even much lower, if a developer agreed to build new houses in the urban core.

At a task force meeting Wednesday, panel members pointed out that KC could have been charging this fee for years in the growing Northland.

That's true. While home builders would have grumbled, they likely still would have developed the large tracts of land in the Northland.

But the new charge could suffer from bad timing, at least as long as the housing market is in the doldrums. If home construction remains slow, the city won't get a lot of money from the new fee.

The consultant said that, based on an average of 1,500 homes built in the city every year, that charge could bring in $7.7 million a year.

It would go part way -- although not a long way -- to solving the Water Service Department's woes in paying for new water and sewer lines.

So what's the future of this new fee?

A Home Builders Association representative wasn't at the Wednesday meeting to protest, although one task force member pointed out that builders certainly would not embrace the new fee.