Editorials

Collecting impact fees should be for all the right reasons

Hernando Today
Published: November 20, 2011

There is a long history regarding the imposition of impact fees.

One of the first court decisions goes back more than 20 years and involved the City of Tequesta, Fla., where the court upheld the right of the city to collect the fees.

One of the biggest problems has been that the Florida Legislature never codified the issue of impact fees, but let the matter play out in myriad court decisions. The main issue is that impact fees must be directly tied to the impact caused by new development, be it a single home, apartment, commercial or industrial use, and they must receive a direct benefit.

Over the years, there was some refinement by the courts, such as ruling that impact fees could not be used for anything other than new capacity. There have been, however, instances where that interpretation of the law was not followed and yet still upheld.

County governments were required to inventory its assets of school classrooms, collector roads, libraries, public buildings and so on and use that information as a baseline. Then levels of service were set by that inventory in the Comprehensive Plan, to maintain the existing quality of life.

All too often governments strayed from the true intent, maneuvered around the rules and used the money to fund questionable projects.

One such example was the funding of a traffic signal that could not receive the necessary warrant for installation, but was installed anyway at a cost of almost $500,000. Impact fee money cannot be used to have schools come into compliance with the student per classroom amendment.

Maintenance of buildings also does not qualify as "new capacity" and therefore are not candidates for the use of impact fees. Residential roads do not qualify, but rather collector roads such as Mariner Boulevard would qualify. The county is presently above its level of service for parks and we do not need to be building them anymore; that is one fee that needs to be eliminated. New developments are required to build parks within its boundary but are not counted in our inventory. Why?

In recent years, the Florida Legislature has passed more defining rules for impact fees and how they should be accounted for. One thing to remember is that with all the additions there comes with it a requirement to provide people service and maintain the additions and that cannot be done with impact fees; that is funded out of the General Fund, which is composed of taxes and other revenue.