School Board wants developers to pony up

The School Board of Manatee County voted Tuesday to recommend new impact fee rates and to collect the fees at 100 percent. The board’s resolution will be passed along to the county commissioners who ultimately set the rates.

Impact fees are rates paid by developers to offset the cost of accommodating the students who come with new housing. The district can use revenue from the fees to help fund capital projects required to deal with growth, including new buses, the purchase of land, construction of new facilities and a range of other projects.

The new rates are slightly lower than previous rates, but the board is recommending collecting 100 percent of the fees, rather than the reduced rate of 75 percent currently in place. In 2015 the board decided to collect impact fees at a graduated rate for the first three years, and fees were not due to be collected at 100 percent until April 2018.

The new rates are the result of an updated study conducted by TischlerBise, a Maryland-based consulting firm hired by the district to calculate the rate builders pay.

TischlerBise President Carson Bise presented the updated study to board members during the school board work session Tuesday afternoon.

Bise said the district would have to add space for roughly 4,700 students over the next 10 years, with plans for a new high school, middle school, elementary school and several expansions. Bise said without that construction, in 2027, elementary school capacity would be at 110 percent, middle schools would be at 96 percent and high schools would be at 118 percent.

According to the study, several schools are already well over capacity. Virgil Mills Elementary is currently at 145 percent capacity, Haile Middle School is at 127 percent and Lakewood Ranch High School is at 139 percent.

Jon Mast, the Manatee-Sarasota Building Industry Association’s CEO, opposes the implementation of the new rates. He said developers have a thin profit margin, and before the board meeting he said word of the school board’s likely decision had already impacted the building industry.

“Builders that already previously agreed to lot purchases are already renegotiating because of the increased dollar amount,” Mast said.

Mast said collecting the fees at 100 percent put the board at risk to a lawsuit if the recommended rates ended up being too high, and Mike Pendley, executive planner for the school district, said it was good the district had not been collecting fees at 100 percent.

“If we had been collecting at 100 percent, we would be in the refund business,” Pendley said.

The county commission will consider the board’s recommendation and must pass a resolution to adjust the rate. After that point there will be a 90-day cooling off period, so the soonest the new fees could go into effect would be this fall.

Tuesday was board member Karen Carpenter’s final meeting. She announced earlier this month that she would be moving to Massachusetts to be closer to her grandchildren.

This story was originally published May 23, 2017 at 8:44 PM with the headline "School Board wants developers to pony up."