An Impact Fee Reminder

"Like-minded" advisory board perplexed

This Thursday (June 6), the Board of County Commissioners will be having our first of two public hearings to finalize the future of our impact fees. These fees have been a source of contention with the public as they are massively under collected and your lack of infrastructure, parks and schools are a direct reflection of this shortfall. In the future, your potential for further deficiencies in infrastructure along with higher taxes to fund those needs not paid by impact fees will be all too real.

Before Thursday, I wanted to summarize how we got here by reposting two of my past Substacks on this issue.

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Initially, the majority of the Board tried to slip an “increase” through that would have fundamentally broken our system by going to the full amount of the 2015 study.

The Subtle Art of Deception

Then, after being caught in the act, a subsequent move was made to hide behind the State and increase the current impact fees by only 50%. An increase which, after four years of nominal increases, will still put our county deep in the hole for covering the actual cost of growth.

The Subtle Art of...the Pivot

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The reason this decision is so important is because the State Legislature decided that no county, regardless of shortfall or growth rate, can increase their impact fees more than once every four years. Therefore, this decision made in 2024 will be felt for almost half a decade, regardless of election outcomes.

But it didn’t have to be this way and it still doesn’t. A simple process would allow the Board to increase fees to the full extent of the Impact Fee Study and enforce that full increase immediately. All we needed was a supermajority vote and a “demonstrated needs study”. While it’s been implied that a full increase could “open up a lawsuit”, that is not a credible risk. Multiple other high-growth counties have used their impact fee study as a show of demonstrated need and were successful in increasing well above the state limit.

People can file a lawsuit against us for any reason. It doesn’t mean they’ll be successful. We were sued twice for our best-in-class wetland buffers. That developer lost twice and the county was able to retain its buffers. Until “favorable” changes were made via board vote rather than judge ruling. And that’s just what we’re seeing here.

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What makes this so frustrating is that even “like-minded” Planning Commission advisory board members are confused by the majority of the Board’s decision. Not only does this decision affect your impact fees, but it carries over to the School Board collections, thus minimizing the fees which can be used to build future schools to ease our over-capacity issues for your kids and grandkids.

The Planning Commission met on Thursday, May 30 to hear the final impact fee determination for the first time. The video of this presentation and discussion is below.

I want to thank Planning Commission Chairman Richard Bedford and Planning Commissioner Paul Rutledge for their thoughtful questions. Their confusion and concerns echoed those that I’ve made for years.

Their dialogue and questioning showed us what a well-functioning board can look like. A Board focused on getting answers, not justifying a narrative and a pre-scripted outcome. A Board looking out for Manatee County, not for their campaign fundraising. A Board willing to open up discussion, not shut down conversation with calling the question and going off on rants about how impact fees are somehow “liberal” or “unconstitutional”.

The Bradenton Times made similar insights this weekend:

The idiocy of our Banana Republicans was on full display again in Thursday’s planning commission meeting, when planning commissioners asked all of the questions residents expected county commissioners to ask when Van Ostenbridge put forth his plan to make his developer buddies pay their fair share on impact fees. As I wrote in this column, in actuality, it was nothing short of a big wet kiss to his developer sugar daddies, but the planning commission gives an idea of what the BOCC meeting would have looked like, were the board not, in James Satcher’s words, “kind of on a string up here.”

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This Thursday starts the process of under collecting impact fees and under developing your infrastructure for the foreseeable future. You have this week to let the Board know you’d like a reconsideration. Or you can stop by Thursday morning.

There IS a chance. One incumbent is already sending out mailers touting how he is leading the way in “making developers pay their fair share”. That sounds good to me, it sounds good to the Planning Commission and I’m sure it sounds good to YOU.

I just don’t think our definition of fair share is “like-minded” with this particular commissioner.