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Fee waiver zones near an end for developers

The incentive has done its job, commissioners say as they agree to drop it for seven of eight areas.

By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK
Published June 14, 2006

TAMPA -In less than an hour Tuesday, Hillsborough County commissioners all but eliminated a 6-year-old tax break that has generated controversy since its inception.

Asserting that the program had jump-started development in many ailing parts of the county, commissioners unanimously agreed to stop waiving transportation impact fees and water and sewer hookup fees in seven of eight zones: Causeway, Gibsonton, Palm River, East Lake-Orient Park, Ruskin, Town 'N Country and Wimauma.

One "no-fee zone" would remain, in the area surrounding the University of South Florida, which has not seen significant economic development during six years of fee waivers.

The decision still requires a final vote later this summer.

Chairman Jim Norman, perhaps the program's biggest advocate, was absent. He underwent heart surgery last month.

"I don't have any regrets for what we enacted," said Commissioner Tom Scott, one of the program's original backers.

But the time has come, Scott and his colleagues concluded, to end the lure to developers. Because "development is coming to those areas anyway" now, said Commissioner Ronda Storms, who had pressed to eliminate the waivers for more than a year.

Some community leaders have argued that some of the communities - particularly Gibsonton - always had development coming.

At the time the commission put Gibsonton into the program, new subdivisions already were in the works. Commissioner Kathy Castor asserted that the growing area should not have benefited from such an incentive. All it did was deprive the region of millions of dollars to pay for new or improved roads, she said.

Storms blasted Castor for looking at the program with hindsight.

Gibsonton had been plagued with blight, she said, and the county had no plans to run water and sewers to areas where families clearly needed them. The county had to attract developers to the region to help the people living there, she contended.

"It was never, before the vote, 'We know this development is going to be there. We're going to vote for it anyway,' " Storms said.

Not mentioned at the meeting was the largesse doled out by a powerful businessman in 2000 to the four commissioners who approved the zones: Norman, Scott, Storms and Chris Hart.

Concrete manufacturer Ralph Hughes, his relatives and close business associates contributed a total of $20,000 to the campaigns of the four commissioners in the 2000 and 2002 elections.

Hughes sat on a task force that recommended the no-fee zones, a position adopted by those four commissioners. His company supplied building materials to two large subdivisions in Gibsonton that skipped paying impact fees.

In a 2002 interview with the Times, Hughes said he didn't know he had projects in a waiver zone.

Castor did try to retain the program for downtown Ruskin, along the U.S. 41 corridor. She argued that community developers and residents reached a consensus during contentious planning meetings that they wanted to draw more businesses to that strip.

Other commissioners refused to do anything more than back a motion requesting more information about the Ruskin area. Storms vigorously opposed keeping any part of Ruskin in the mix, stating, "We know today that redevelopment is coming to Ruskin. We do not need to encourage it."

She accused Castor of using one set of arguments to fault the commission about the Gibsonton zone while turning around to invoke an opposite rationale in her own push for the Ruskin zone, which is in Castor's district.

"It's galling," Storms said angrily. "You can't have it both ways."

Castor tried to rebut Storms, but eventually withdrew with an exasperated-sounding laugh.

Even though it was a public hearing, no one from the public attended.

The tax break program started in 2000 and was reauthorized in 2003.

According to county records, developers took out 4,501 residential and commercial permits in the affected areas during that time, with more than half going to Gibsonton. The county waived $7.3-million in road impact fees through the program, and paid out an additional $14.3-million in water connection fees.

It collected $16-million in property taxes from the zones during the same period, $5.5-million less than the total amount of waived fees.

Jeffrey S. Solochek can be reached at solochek@sptimes.com or 813 269-5304.

[Last modified June 14, 2006, 05:27:14]