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Sheriff needs little argument for impact fee funds

By C.T, BOWEN
Published August 9, 2006

You have to admire the timing, even if it was coincidental.

No, not Commissioner Pat Mulieri's. Though, it certainly didn't hurt her continued political aspirations to break ground on an expanded recreation center in Land O'Lakes less than a month before her re-election contest against two Republican challengers.

We were actually thinking of the political fortune of Sheriff Bob White. Here's why:

Tuesday morning, gathered under the oak trees for protection from the late-morning sun, Mulieri, Commissioners Ann Hildebrand and Ted Schrader and about two dozen others celebrated the ongoing construction of an expanded recreation center in Land O'Lakes.

It was a little hard to hear sometimes with the bulldozers, dump trucks and other heavy equipment moving around dirt. The work began a month ago to double the size of the current 40-acre park. The new amenities will include four baseball-softball diamonds, four soccer/football fields, four outdoor basketball courts, a dog park, a recreation trail and a tot playground. Existing basketball courts will be turned into a skate park.

As we've pointed out in this space previously, it is a prudent community investment at a site that is the de facto town center in Land O'Lakes. Construction and design costs are close to $6.5-million with nearly four-fifths of that covered by impact fees, the one-time surcharges on new construction to ensure growth helps pick up the tab for the increased demand for services.

Less than an hour before the 11 gold-colored shovels turned the ceremonial dirt, Pasco's school district began classes in its newest school - so new it's actually housed in portable classrooms until construction of Wiregrass Ranch High is complete in January. It's one of six new schools that opened Tuesday in a district that expected to welcome 62,100 students on the first day of the new school year.

The school district spent more than $3.5-million in impact fee money to buy the land for the Wiregrass Ranch High School. Overall, impact fees of nearly $9-million allowed the district to acquire land for four of the six new schools that opened Tuesday. The cost is still being calculated for Oakstead Elementary in central Pasco and Paul Smith Middle School in Holiday because developers donated those parcels in exchange for impact fee credits.

So, if you're keeping track, impact fees helped build new schools and new parks in Pasco County. Now comes law enforcement.

Tuesday afternoon, Sheriff Bob White's office was the subject of a new consultant's study presented to county commissioners. It calls for new revenue to meet Pasco's growing public safety needs. You guessed it. The consultant recommends an impact fee.

The report estimated the county needs more than $61-million worth of capital spending by 2015 for two jail expansions, a new communications system, three sheriff's substations, and $35,000 worth of patrol cruisers, uniforms, and equipment for each new officer hired. More than two-thirds of the suggested spending is attributed to keeping pace with growth.

The big-ticket items, it should be noted, are out of the sheriff's hands. The jail pods and the communications system will become part of the county's capital improvement budget. They are the responsibility of the commission, not the sheriff.

So, it was the commission, without the sheriff present, that decided to accept this consultant's report at face value. That was the easy part.

"It's not whether you need it, it's: Who's going to pay for it," said Assistant County Administrator Dan Johnson.

Does the board want to adopt yet another impact fee to help pay for law enforcement, or would it rather tap the property tax-driven general fund?

The consultant's report calls for a relatively modest law enforcement impact fee of $649 per single-family house. By comparison, the county also is considering raising its park impact fee to $1,180 per house.

The county still must draft an ordinance and send it to a pair of citizen committees for review before it comes back to the commission for public hearings, perhaps in five to six months. But this question appears to be already answered.

New schools, new parks, expanded libraries, roads, water and sewer equipment, and firefighting and emergency services are all being financed in part by impact fee revenue.

It would be ridiculous not to do the same for law enforcement, a move the county signaled back in 1999, when it commissioned a series of capital improvement master plans to detail how to meet growing demands on services.

Bob White? He is the beneficiary of the commission's determination and foresight. Despite published criticism characterizing White as an exorbitant spender and the commission as over-reliant on impact fees, how could the board members possibly say no after tossing dirt at an impact fee-financed park in Land O'Lakes?

This fee should come with a get-out-of-political-jail-for-free card for the sheriff.

C.T. Bowen can be reached at bowen@sptimes.com or at (727) 869-6239.

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[Last modified August 9, 2006, 06:55:54]