At Thursday’s land use meeting, Manatee County Commissioners took their final vote on a massive giveaway to developers and enacted a discounted impact fee schedule that will ensure growth does not have to pay for itself.
Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature have made it harder for communities to charge adequate impact fees to support the infrastructure required by new growth. The current statute (which was amended during the 2021 legislative session) limits increases to impact fees to 50%, which can only be done in four annual increases of 12.5%. Increases of more than 12.5% but less than 25% must be phased in equally over two years.
What’s more, once you raise impact fees, you are locked in without the ability to raise them again for the next four years. Because it used an outdated study, your county commission voted yesterday to phase in a 50% increase over what is being collected now, which is 90% of 2015 costs. Yes, you read that right, and if you would like to take a deeper dive, read this post in County Commissioner George Kruse’s SubStack.
However, for communities like Manatee County, where highways have been choked off by growth driven by developers’ wishes rather than community planning, there is a process by which communities can collect the full amount of impact fees prescribed by a study. First, governments must provide a calculation as to how they arrived at the need for the amount based on “the most recent and localized data,” which Manatee County has already done. They then need to hold at least two publicly-noticed workshops explaining the necessary exceptions to the phase-in limitations. Finally, a super-majority vote (five of seven commissioners) is required.
Kruse, who is up for reelection in August’s primary, has been pushing for the implementation of full impact fees since getting elected to the board in 2020. He has been stymied at every turn by developer-controlled commissioners like Mike Rahn, Jason Bearden, Amanda Ballard, (until recently) James Satcher, and, most of all, Medallion Home CEO Carlos Beruff’s errand boy Kevin Van Ostenbridge.
In other words, there was no chance that the prescribed process for collecting full impact fees was going to happen before the upcoming election. And remember, the board cannot raise impact fees again for the next four years, so the timing of the vote ensures that even if voters elect a new majority this year, our county is going to continue to be underfunded for critical infrastructure, just as it explained to the citizens this summer when presenting a budget that was choc full of scheduled infrastructure projects that had been delayed indefinitely.
Kruse once again explained all of this to his fellow commissioners. Board Chair and developer lickspittle Mike Rahn hemmed and hawed and tried to bend himself into a pretzel to both try and agree with Kruse’s common sense and serve the developers who got him a much-needed job in 2020. Board moron Jason Bearden made a bunch of imbecilic mouth sounds of which no actual sense could be made. Van Ostenbridge, who is challenging Kruse for the countywide D7 seat in the August primary, kept his mouth shut until it was time to make a motion, which he eagerly did.
If you don’t want your beautiful county to continue to descend into a polluted, overdeveloped traffic nightmare just so that filthy rich developers can pad their bottom line, vote these puppets out of office in the August primary. Below are TBT’s endorsements, in which we recommend only grassroots candidates who represent the people, all of whom face developer-sponsored lackeys. If all four win, the madness will end.
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.
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Cat L
I wish I was surprised.
Friday, August 9 Report this
rayfusco68
The recent tropical storm that dumped a record 15 inches of rain on Manatee and Sarasota Counties exposed the inadequate development planning and infrastructure needs in both communities. Manatee County dumped 8.5 million gallons of raw sewage into the Manatee river due to inadequate infrastructure to handle the rain fall. This is not the first time this has happened and yes this was a record rain fall, but we live in a climate zone that this can and does happen, and should be planned for. Residential areas in both Manatee and Sarasota Counties were flooded due to inadequate infrastructure and topographical planning. We need to stop all massive development projects in both Counties until adequate infrastructure is put in place and topographical planning for water run off is addressed.
Friday, August 9 Report this
nellmcphillips
Vote these clowns out. The cozy relationship between developers and commissioners is probably linked to issues with recent flooding. Were faulty drainage plans approved? Were drainage plans built per the plans? Does anyone follow up on inspections post development on drainage plans? When adjacent development is built does it account for the new lay of the land? Someone needs to start asking the hard questions on how a non flood area was flooded. I am only speculating but someone needs to start asking the hard questions because at this point our county is not safe and logic would point to these cozy relationships and the lack of citizen input.
Friday, August 9 Report this
409harley
"They" did it because "they" know it will be the last hurrah for them. OUT, OUT, OUT ...
Friday, August 9 Report this
Debann
The title should say The BOCC screws their constituents once again..GOTTA MAKE THEIR DADDIES HAPPY,and they ARE..
THEIR also laughing all the way to the bank..
ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES..
VOTE THE IDIOTS OUT..THE REST OF THE GARBAGE IN 2026...DOESN'T THE CHAIR Make you feel warm and fuzzy...Another RUDE and arrogant ASSWIPE...must be normal for those sitting on the dais to treat the people that VOTED THEM IN LIKE DIRT ...TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE..THANK YOU GEORGE KRUSE..KICK VANBONEHEAD OUT
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Friday, August 9 Report this
dreed135
Definitely not a surprise. As a 72-year-old lifelong Florida resident on one side of Tampa Bay or the other with 46 years having been spent here in Manatee county, I can tell you that I have firsthand witnessed the mass destruction from Pinellas County to south Sarasota.it is not only disheartening, but it is absolutely disgusting that our developer stacked government leaders could care less about the environment or their constituents just so they can remain in office and satisfy their greedy developer handlers. We’ve been flooded in our forty plus year old home twice in seven years, something which never occurred in this neighborhood before then, and each time the county calls it a 100 year event so it is beyond control. Well, sound civil engineering and planning, as well as governing state laws and county ordinances, require stormwater planning to accommodate 100 year events. Of course that is not taken into consideration. There are also laws on the books that prohibit new development from shedding water flow into existing developments. That is another regulation, completely ignored by regulators and developers. Thousands of people in both counties have suffered millions of dollars of losses due to flooding caused by inadequate drainage in the face of rampant, uncontrolled development.
Unfortunately, loss of property is going to pale in the not too distant future when we have an actual real cat 4 or 5 or maybe even a 3 hurricane come through and people wait too long to evacuate on inadequate roads that will be clogged and immediately become parking lots. I predict rather than pictures of floating vehicles in flooded roads you’ll see pictures of floating dead bodies Because they’re building for a catastrophe and have been for decades.
When Lake Manatee was proposed in the 60s, the federal government advised county officials back then that the lake would need to be three times the size it ultimately became in order to function for flood control. The county’s response to the federal government was that they were not interested in flood control only an unlimited source of drinking water. Of course that was to insure development could never be stymied due to the only thing that ever seems to halt or hinder unbridled development; lack of drinking water. I hope the people in Paris understand that.
Saturday, August 10 Report this