Impact fee freeze runs hot, cold

When it comes to lowering or suspending impact fees, there will always be two opposing schools of thought.
This latest proposal from a local builder, calling for a temporary fee freeze, is no different.
County commissioners will discuss it at Tuesday's county commission workshop. But reaction is already coming in.
Former Planning and Zoning Commissioner Anthony Palmieri said there is no proof that reducing or freezing impact fees will increase home construction.
Single-family homebuyers pay a one-time impact fee of about $9,200, if they live in the Brooksville, Hernando County or Hernando Beach fire district. Spring Hill homebuyers pay the lowest at $9,127
Palmieri said there is no guarantee builders will lower the price of their homes correspondingly.
"These builders keep saying higher fees prevent (homeowners) from buying new houses," he said. "If you reduce impact fees by 50 percent, will they reduce their profits by 50 percent?"
Right now, builders do not advertise impact fees to their clients and often, homeowners don't even know that fee is in the contract, he said.
"The county needs all the money it can get," Palmieri said. "We're trying to attract business and to do that you need infrastructure. You need impact fees to build infrastructure."
Palmieri said it would be unfair for newcomers to get away without paying the fee while existing homeowners not only had to pay it but must deduct that from the overall value of their home.
"Isn't that discrimination?" he asked.
Civic activist Janey Baldwin voiced the same concerns.
"What about the people who already paid their impact fees?" she asked. "How are they going to feel when they find out there is no longer an impact fee? Are they going to get a refund? I just think it's unfair."
Baldwin said for most prospective homeowners, that $9,200 impact fee is not a deal breaker on a home sale.
"It won't make a difference to the homeowner," she said. "The only difference it will have is to the builder who has more profit to put in his pocket."
Marilyn Pearson-Adams, president of the Hernando County Association of Realtors, said if the temporary suspension of impact fees puts people back to work, then it's worth it.
The more people kept employed will not become more statistics added to the list of short sales and foreclosures, she said.
An impact fee freeze "is really one more tool in the tool box that will give Hernando County an advantage over other counties," she said.
In a resolution sent to the board, builder Jeff West said a lack of incentives for new building "makes it impossible to compete with existing residential sales."
Artistic Homes owner Bob Eaton said the temporary freeze would put people back to work.
That belief is shared by Sam Wilson, past president of The Heather Property Owners Association, who believes the proposal is particularly appealing to young college graduates.
Many of them cannot find work, he said.
"If construction is busy, they will hire them," Wilson said. "Right now, they're not hiring anybody."
Proponents of the impact fee suspension got some backing this week from school board members who voted 4-1 to consider the possibility, even though it would cost the district an estimated $1.4 million in new revenue.
This is the second time in two years there has been a push by builders and other business members to relax impact fees.
Last year, county commissioners rejected a proposal to reduce the fees 25 percent, frustrating supporters who believed it would spur home ownership and construction.
The business community lobbied hard for commissioners to take advantage of a state appropriations bill that set aside $20 million statewide in non-recurring funds to provide down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers.
To qualify, commissioners needed to reduce impact fees by at least 25 percent for a minimum 18 months.
Commissioner David Russell, the only board member to vote for the proposal, said the county had nothing to lose and everything to gain by lowering the fees and providing an incentive for potential homebuyers.
But the support from his colleagues was not there.
The major fear was that the county would lose an estimated $3.6 million in impact fee revenue that would put a big dent on the county's ability to fund adopted capital improvement projects.