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Drivers questioned in fee study
By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer WESLEY CHAPEL -- Consultants hired by Pasco County are stopping cars at various neighborhoods and shopping centers to determine people's driving destinations, the information being used to raise fees for buyers of new homes. So far Tindale Oliver and Associates Inc. has surveyed about 2,000 people in neighborhoods such as Meadow Pointe and Lexington Oaks in Wesley Chapel, and Veteran's Village and Natures Hideaway in west Pasco. The clipboard-carrying consultants, interviewing drivers through their car windows, are after two bits of information: where you are coming from and where you are going. With the numbers, the county hopes to predict the frequency and length of trips stemming from particular types of development. The data will figure in a consultants' report to raise the transportation impact fee charged each buyer of a new home. The impact fee, which pays for new roads, stands at $2,177 per new home. The county plans to raise it several hundred more dollars, perhaps as early as this year. "Generally speaking, we have picked locations that are growing now or are expected to grow in the future," said Bob Wallace, the planner and engineer running the survey. The next phase of the survey has interviewers staking out businesses. Wallace declined to name the exact businesses; but Tindale Oliver will send people to three sit-down restaurants, three fast-food joints, three stand-alone drug stores and two shopping centers. Most drivers have agreed to the 30-second interviews after they were stopped at orange traffic cones on streets such as County Line Road and Seven Springs roads, Wallace said. To quiet suspicions, Tindale Oliver has chosen interviewers that are "clean-cut and approachable," he said. Nevertheless, a few complaints have trickled into the county's Planning Department and the Sheriff's Office. "Of the people we've stopped we're probably in the 80 to 90 percent range of success," Wallace said.
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