Impact fees hotly debated

HIGH SPRINGS – Impact fees remain a hot issue in High Springs after a heated city commission meeting July 11. The matter came under scrutiny during the public comments portion of the meeting by some members of the public who had come to address the ordinance to set water and sewer system impact fees.

The commission had unanimously tabled the matter at the start of the meeting. City Attorney Scott Walker suggested the item be tabled to the July 25meeting, since a study that was the basis for Ordinance 2013-05, had been reviewed and revised by the city’s engineering firm, Mittauer & Associates, and only returned to his office for final city staff review the afternoon of the meeting.

Walker applauded City Manager Ed Booth for performing the initial study and Mittauer for their hard work on the project. He said if they had gone to an engineering firm to conduct the study, it would have cost $25,000. Mittauer agreed to review the study and make recommendations at a cost of $2,000-$2,500 according to Walker.

While Booth’s suggested impact fee levels were already one-third less than the fees currently on the books, which can be as high as $9,000 per household depending on meter size, Walker said Mittauer had suggested even lower impact fees in one area.

When Booth delivered his study in March, he said, “Although the impact fees were set at an earlier time at $9,000, the city has not collected those fees in the past.” In 2010, the city issued a moratorium on impact fees, which has now expired leaving the higher impact fees in effect.

After the meeting, Booth said that most households have ¾-inch meters. For that size meter, he said, “the sewer impact fee is currently $3,524 and the water impact fee is $3,111, but the impact fees go up for larger meters and can reach as high as $9,000.”

Rick Howe, builder/developer for Oak Ridge Subdivision, located on U.S. Hwy. 441, addressed commissioners complaining that the city had allowed “zero stakeholder input” into the process. He said he had asked former mayors Larry Travis and Dean Davis and this commission to allow for citizen and stakeholder input, to no avail.

He further said that he had requested a copy of the ordinance for review and had been told he could have one at the meeting, which he still had not received. Howe said he was the number one builder/developer in the city and had pulled more permits than any other developer and still was denied input into the ordinance.

Howe said that many of the homes he built were financed by groups such as USDA with only a $1,000 down payment, adding “$3,000 in additional costs did make a difference” to those people. “A lot of people who depend on this town’s growth and depend on a sustainable growth will be impacted by this decision,” he said. He expressed concern that the ordinance might pass in the middle of summer, when many people are out of town and may never be brought back before stakeholders and citizens. He admonished the commission to work with stakeholders and citizens to get the issue resolved.

He also took issue with the way in which the study was done saying, “It is supposed to be conducted by an independent third party.”

He added that he would like to be able to have a dialogue with people who may want to discuss this additional $3,000 cost of their home, but did not feel adequately prepared to do so without more involvement in the process itself.

Mayor Sue Weller said the city is operating under an ordinance with a much higher rate than what is being proposed by the new ordinance. “I have no objection to having a workshop if that’s what the commission decides to do,” she commented, “but the longer it takes to pass this, the higher the rate builders will have to pay.”

Kara Bolton, President of Builders Association of North Central Florida, applauded the commission for their 2010 decision to pass a moratorium, saying that High Springs recognized the need for relief and to provide economic stability during a difficult time.

Bolton suggested the commission extend the moratorium until the new fee structure could be implemented. She also requested that payment of the impact fees be deferred until issuance of the Certificate of Occupancy, something which Booth explained was already included in the ordinance.

Bolton was pleased that the ordinance included an affordable housing exemption, but that builders encourage the city to draft language in the ordinance to update annually the income and price limits as published by the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, the state agency that administers the State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) Program.

Tommy MacIntosh, a local real estate broker, supported Bolton’s recommendations and asked the commission to conduct a workshop to “give citizens more of a chance to be involved.” He also encouraged extension of the moratorium. “Take the time to do this right and do it smartly,” he said.

City manager Booth said a moratorium was unlikely.

“We are already more than $200,000 in the hole on impact fees.”

By way of explanation Booth said, “The city borrowed $450,000 to design the sewer plant and other engineering projects. We had $244,000 in a CD that represented the impact fees we had already collected. The design of the sewer plant and other engineering projects cost the city $450,000, which was paid to Jones Edmunds & Associates.”

“The city didn’t have the money, so we borrowed it in a bridge loan from Republic Bank. When it was decided not to do Phase 4 of the sewer system, the bank became concerned that the city wasn’t going to get the bonding money to pay for the bridge loan, so they took $200,000 of the $244,000 and put it against the loan the city had made,” he said.

“That leaves us at the present time having to pay off $250,000 which represents impact fee monies we should have been collecting, but did not because of the moratorium,” he said.

Booth said also, “At the present time, the commission has not set a date for a workshop to discuss this issue any further. We will be holding the first public hearing on this issue at the July 25 meeting and will take whatever input the public has to offer at that time.”

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