Vote on impact fees will have to wait

Commissioners want to gather more information before deciding whether to raise the fees. A vote could be months away.

By BRIDGET HALL

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 10, 2000

INVERNESS -- Commissioners said Tuesday they still need more information before voting on an increase in impact fees.

But the necessary studies won't pay for themselves, so commissioners have asked staffers to draft an ordinance setting aside a portion of the current impact fees to pay for gathering the additional information.

The ordinance also would bring the county into compliance with a bill passed last week by the Legislature to limit counties to charging only 37.5 percent of their current school impact fees.

In Citrus County, the school impact fee would drop from $135 to $50 per home.

Gathering the additional information that commissioners requested, including more specific plans for how the impact fee revenue would be spent, could take the rest of this year, said Gary Maidhof, director of development services.

Once that information is available, the commissioners will hold another workshop to decide what the new rates should be. The current rates have not been changed in more than a decade.

The commissioners said they don't mind waiting a few months to revisit the impact-fee issue, as long as they end up with the information they need to make the rates accurate and defensible.

"Whatever we do needs to be fair, and it needs to make sense," Commissioner Jim Fowler said. "If the rates go up, I can defend that, as long as I know what I'm talking about."

In other commission news:

Animal Control complaints. Several residents told commissioners that their complaints to Animal Control about neglected horses on West Cardinal Street were ignored for more than a year, until an emaciated yearling had to be destroyed last week. "That gravely concerns me, that people made previous attempts to call in and resolve this situation, but nothing happened," Commissioner Gary Bartell said. Public safety director Charles Poliseno, who oversees Animal Control, said he is looking into the case.

Letter to Levy. Commissioners approved a request from Dunnellon resident Leona Field to write a letter to the Levy County Commission expressing concern about a pyrotechnics display held April 15 and 16 near the county line. Field said the fireworks exploded every three to five minutes, starting at 11 a.m. and running until 11 p.m. both days. "I almost thought it was going to blow the doors off of their tracks," Field said. "I almost thought it was going to blow in the glass in my windows." Bartell said Citrus should be concerned about the noise and the fire hazard that such a display can cause.

Watering restrictions. County Attorney Larry Haag said the county is trying to get clarification on which days residents are allowed to water their lawns. He said there has been some confusion about which set of rules to follow. As for reporting a neighbor who appears to be watering at the wrong time, Haag said residents should call the Sheriff's Office at 726-4488, not 911. The Sheriff's Office has been getting about 1,000 calls a day on water restriction issues, Haag said, and too many of them have come through 911, tying up the emergency phone lines.

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