Builders assemble fee excuses

By C.T. BOWEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 4, 2001

Attention, builders. Get the excuse list ready for the next scheduled meeting to discuss a proposed school impact fee. Here's a sample of what's available.

1. Impact fees stymie growth.

Oldie, but goodie even if the county's road and utility fees sure never stopped new-home construction.

2. Impact fees are unfair to people who don't live here.

Difficult to say with a straight face.

3. Schools are too costly.

Trot out cost-per-square-foot figures. Who cares if the Pasco school district received extra construction money from the state because it built schools so efficiently?

4. We should be looking at all school construction needs, not just in the future.

Translation: Revenue generated from an impact fee, just under $4-million annually, won't even build one new elementary school, so why bother?

5. Who are we to question the wisdom of the state Legislature?

Another one that is difficult to say with a straight face.

6. The information in the school district study is flawed. Demand its author appear to question his methodology.

The builders aren't bright enough to question the Legislature, but now they're smarter than the guy who's been doing this for 25 years? So what if his company has developed more than 150 impact fees nationally, more than any other consulting firm; builders don't think he knows what he's talking about.

7. Make a half-hearted suggestion for a sales tax increase.

Extremely safe. It'll never pass.

8. Complain the information was received too late to digest.

A legitimate concern. Can be used as a fallback if everything else fails. Might be good to use if the county attorney calls bluff about wanting higher taxes.

9. Look at how Hillsborough does it.

Yeah, that's a county to emulate. Hope nobody checks that Hillsborough's token impact fee is not intended to cover school construction, just land acquisition; that the district has three times as many portable classrooms as Pasco County and two high schools in the high-growth areas are on double sessions because of crowding.

10. Three words: Capacity Assessment Fee.

Excellent. Nobody will know what it is. Builders can get indignant that it hasn't been explored as a financing method and delay the whole impact fee discussion.

And that's the way it went last week at a joint meeting of the county's advisory committees on impact fees and affordable housing to consider a proposed school impact fee at just under $1,700 per single-family home. The final decision rests with the County Commission, but the advisory panels get their say.

We should back up here and note that not everyone was dishing up the subterfuge. Tom Smith of General Home Development in Dade City, the impact fee advisory panel's chairman, acknowledged he didn't like fees, but defended school construction techniques and said he likely will support the school impact fee. Hudson car dealer Tom Castriota was more forceful. Delaying a vote is a waste of time; the school district needs the money, he said.

But, others served so much red herring, it looked like a seafood market.

Cindy Meyer, government liaison for the Pasco Builders Association, floated the idea of a capacity assessment fee and questioned why the Pasco School District hadn't examined it. It's being used successfully in Hillsborough County, she contended.

Only partly accurate. In Hillsborough, the fee assessment is applicable for water and sewer impact fees only, though the Builders Association of Greater Tampa wants to expand it to include transportation fees. It does not apply to school construction. Never has.

Essentially, it's a payment of an impact fee over a specified period of time, perhaps 10 years. It would take a new county ordinance to institute, separate from the impact fee question. To participate, individual developers must apply to the county to join. After their projects are enrolled, the impact fees are assigned to individual building lots. The home buyer, instead of absorbing the impact fee cost in the price of the house, pays the fee over time as a separate assessment on annual tax bills. Builders like it because it holds down the advertised price of their houses.

And because it is an assessment, governmental authorities can borrow against the future income to do capital improvements immediately. That is prohibited with impact fees. But, even if it were allowed in Pasco County, the school district has little interest in borrowing more money under that scenario because the long-term interest cost whittles dollars available for future construction, said Superintendent John Long.

Here's the kicker: In order for the fee assessment to be adopted, impact fees must be in place first.

It was just one of the details the builders failed to mention in their quest to delay -- a euphemism for kill -- Pasco's school impact fee proposal.

Frankly, the excuse-making and double talk were so blatant, you wondered what kind of malarkey some of these people heap on potential customers.

County Attorney Robert Sumner put it much more succinctly after listening to the builders, real estate agents, and their representatives speak wistfully of some other, undefined way to pay for new schools.

"I think," Sumner said, "that it's a cop-out."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright