‘We need this money now’: School board may raise impact fees

Developers in Manatee County may be paying higher impact fees beginning this spring, depending on a school board vote next week.

The School Board of Manatee County will vote Tuesday on whether to increase impact fees for developers in 2017 from 75 percent to 100 percent of the recommended fee. While developers are unhappy at the prospect, some board members point to schools bursting at the seams and a county in need of funds for building new schools.

“When you look at our numbers over the past two, three school years, we have to build even more schools than we thought we did,” school board Chairman Charlie Kennedy said. “We need this money now. We can’t wait.”

Kennedy said escalating the fees to 100 percent in 2017 could bring in an additional $2 million next year.

But Jon Mast, CEO of the Manatee-Sarasota Building Industry Association, said the board’s approach is misguided.

“It’s going to drive up the cost of homes, and they still are not going to get that funding that they need through impact fees,” Mast said.

After the economic crisis in 2009, the school board suspended impact fees in hopes of spurring development. In the first year the fees were eliminated, the schools reported a $5.8 million total decrease in capital program revenue, with $4.6 million of that decrease caused by lost impact fees.

Last fall, the school board began discussing reinstating those fees based on the recommendations of TischlerBise Inc., a Maryland-based consulting firm.

Carson Bise, president of TischlerBise, recommended the following school impact fees:

• $3,276 for a multifamily or other style home.
• $6,415 for a duplex or townhouse.
• $6,086 for a single family home.
• $1,372 for a mobile home.

The board took a cautious route, voting in November 2015 to increase the fees on a graduated scale over three years and with a caveat to lock fees in at 50 percent if voters approved a 15-year-extension of a half-cent sales tax. Voters did just that on Nov. 8.

“That was one of worst decisions we ever made,” Kennedy said. “Immediately we start getting hammered for that decision and rightfully so. We deserved the abuse that we got because it looked like a handout to the developers.”

The board reversed course on the sales-tax caveat in May but left the graduated scale in place.

Mast said the school board was risking future lawsuits by increasing fees to 100 percent.

“They have to prove that they do need to be charging a certain fee based on certain items. It’s a very complex formula,” Mast said. “If it is incorrect and it is proven so in court, they would have to give the money back.”

But Kennedy is confident in the numbers.

“TischlerBise has done 700 of these studies and never been successfully sued,” Kennedy said.

If the resolution passes, it would move on to the planning commission for a recommendation and then the Board of County Commissioners for a final vote.

This story was originally published December 8, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "‘We need this money now’: School board may raise impact fees."