About Those Impact Fees

At Tuesday's Manatee County Commission meeting, Commissioner George Kruse asked why the approved timeline for addressing impact fees had seemed to be abandoned. He didn't get much of an answer.

Kruse noted that on April 18, the board had voted to move forward with the impact fee study on a timeline that would prevent the need for a costly update. Stakeholder engagement was to take place in May and June, followed by the item going to the planning commission in July before coming back to commissioners in August. 

Kruse pointed out, however, that while the county had deactivated the link for public comment on the matter on July 19 (effectively ending the stakeholder engagement process), the item had yet to come before the planning commission and that the hearing schedule for the county had been pushed back twice, first to September 7 and then to October 5.

Deputy County Administrator Courtney De Pol (currently in the role of acting county administrator) gave a somewhat convoluted answer that referenced the instability of the administrator position since the county parted ways with Scott Hopes, the upcoming rewrite of the comp plan, and said that the commissioners were scheduled to be briefed early next month in order to be given "an opportunity to see what's at play." She added that with the potential of a new administrator coming in, "we owe each of you an opportunity to talk to us about, you know, the pros and cons, and the situation as a whole."

Kruse was understandably confused by the answer and wondered how much time would then be needed for a new administrator to get "up to speed" on the subject. 

In keeping with the theme of the meeting, Kruse couldn't find a friendly face on the dais. The commissioner found this dynamic so frustrating on Tuesday that while trying to get a work session scheduled for the policy that allows for development east of the FDAB, he called Commission Chair Kevin Van Ostenbridge a "d*ck" after the latter moved post haste to declare it dead for lack of a second. 

On this issue, Van Ostenbridge offered a rather weak and garbled defense of Depol's explanation that still didn't answer Kruse's question as to why the timeline had been delayed, especially given the fact that after December, the current study would need to be updated in order to prevent the potential legal liability that could arise from a challenge that the best and most current data had been used.

"We seem to keep moving in one-month increments, later and later, and closer and closer to the stale date of this (report) without any indication of why that's the case," said Kruse. "But stakeholder engagement is over, there's literally nothing left but to come in here and have the board of county commissioners decide how we want to set this. There's nothing left to do but do it. We could do it this afternoon. We've all had this report since spring."

Van Ostenbridge went back to the idea of the current search for a new county administrator, as well as a pending appointment from the governor as to who will finish the remainder of Vanessa Baugh's term, saying that he'd like to see both positions filled before a decision on impact fees is made. County Attorney Bill Clague offered some mealy-mouthed support to the chair, telling Kruse that there are legitimate reasons as to why you would want management-level input to an impact fee process.

Kruse pointed out that they currently have an acting county administrator in Lee Washington who has been in place since February (which commissioners knew when they approved the timeline in April) and that it would be quite some time until whomever the county ultimately hires as the next county administrator has as much time to get up to speed as Washington has already. All of it fell on deaf ears. 

So, if you're wondering when the county will take up the matter of impact fees, get in line. If you're wondering why it's playing out this way, I have a guess. The developers have told Van Ostenbridge that, for whatever reason, they don't want it to come up at the moment and that's the direction he's given De Pol. No, that's not the way it's supposed to work, but ... Manatee County.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is available here.