Jackson Falconer
BRADENTON – A vote on implementing impact fees again in Manatee County for the benefit of the school district was postponed to December during
Tuesday's school board meeting, after local developer Pat Neal and real estate litigation attorney Morgan Bentley argued to the board that the public should have more time to review a newly-released
study on how the fees would potentially affect the county if enacted. The vote has originally been scheduled for Tuesday, but was postponed to November prior to the meeting.
Impact fees are paid by developers for each unit of new housing to help offset the additional strain that residential growth puts on public services. Both the county and the school district can collect their own impact fees with the county's authorization. The county can collect impact fees for infrastructure such as public roads, and the district can collect fees for things such as new school buildings and additional buses.
The school district suspended impact fees in 2009 when the Great Recession hit. The school board requested that the county temporarily suspend collection of fees for one year, ostensibly to aid the economy. The county commission instead suspended them for two years. That suspension has been continuously extended, lasting to present day, and the loss of impact fee collections has been argued as one of the reasons for the district's dire financial straits in recent years.
Earlier this year, the board requested that a study be done on the effects of re-implementing impact fees in the county, and how re-implementation would be done (doing a study on impact fees prior to implementation is required by law).
The study, which was completed by consulting company Tishler Bise, proposed that impact fees be put on duplexes and townhouses for $6,415; single family homes for $6,086; multifamily homes for $3,276; and mobile homes for $1,372.
Speaking during public comments at Tuesday's meeting, Neal said that the study, which was published on the district website on Oct. 19, should not be ready for an agenda vote a week after. "The public has a right to listen to the effects of this major tax proposal," Neal said after his remarks.
Bentley called the study "a fairly complex document" needing more time for review. "Please give us enough time to look at this; let's get some public input," he said to the board. He said that there were currently three middle schools in the county that were below 60 percent utilization.
Speaking after his remarks, Bentley said, "We've met with the consultants, and we knew that the report was gonna come out ... but we didn't know it was gonna come out a week ahead of the original scheduled vote. We just need more time to look at it."
Following discussion, the board decided to postpone November's planned vote until its December meeting.
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