Construction costs prompt recommendation for higher impact fees in Manatee County
Pointing to the rising cost of construction, consultants recommended increasing impact fees by about 35 percent in Manatee County.
Impact fees are the costs charged to developers for the impact that a new project has on certain facilities, such as schools, public safety and transportation. If the county is going to raise the fee, they’d better get serious about improving infrastructure, the Board of County Commissioners said during Tuesday’s work session.
The recommendation to raise impact fees comes from Tindale Oliver, an engineering consulting firm hired to complete the study. The county is required to conduct a new study every five years.
“Our goal is to have a fair fee,” said Deputy County Administrator John Osborne. “We don’t want to overcharge anybody. We want to charge what’s consistent with the growth out there.”
While impact fees are charged at different rates for various types of development, such as single-family homes, hospitals and warehouses, the average proposed increase was between 35 and 40 percent, according to Nilgun Kamp, Tindale Oliver’s director of public finance and infrastructure planning.
But some commissioners said they saw the raising rates as another form of raising taxes, citing campaign promises to keep taxes and fees low.
“A 33 percent increase in taxes seems kind of harsh,” said Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge. “I would say unwelcoming, perhaps, to new residents.”
Commissioner Vanessa Baugh agreed. She expressed concern about the effect that higher impact fees might have on would-be home-buyers in the community. Baugh was one of the only commissioners who voted against raising impact fees in 2015.
“The person buying the property has to pay those impact fees because costs are always given to the buyer. Whoever’s building is going to get their money back,” said Baugh. “We didn’t want to make it even more difficult for residents, at the time, to be able to get a mortgage.”
Instead of raising impact fees, most commissioners said they were interested in using reserves to pay for major improvements to roads, intersections and other ailing infrastructure impacted by growth and new residents. According to Jan Brewer, the county’s director of financial management, there’s about $47.8 million of collected impact fees in reserves.
“I think we should come up with a better system of utilizing these funds. If we’re gonna sit on a reserve that’s higher than a year’s worth of impact fees, either we’re spending it too fast or we’re collecting too much,” said Commissioner George Kruse, echoing the county’s earlier discussion about tapping into reserves for needed projects.
Because Tuesday’s meeting was a work session, the county did not make an official decision. In the coming months, county staff will seek feedback from several stakeholders and outside organizations. The county’s final hearing on impact fee rates is expected to be held on April 1.
