County Commission Rubber Stamps School Board Recommendation on Impact Fees

BRADENTON – At Thursday's meeting, the Manatee County Commission voted 5-2 to adopt the school board's recommendation of only implementing half of the school impact fees recommended in a recent study, despite the district's desperate financial outlook and the need for two to three new schools in the northeast corridor of the county.

In 2009, The Manatee School Board recommended that the collection of school impact fees on new residential construction units be suspended for one year, warning that any longer could render them incapable of meeting capital demands. The county commission, which has final say on all impact fees, ignored the recommendation and suspended the fees for two years and then every year since, with the school board in agreement.

The absence of fees has cost the school district around $60 million in revenues. It currently says it will need hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues to pay for new schools to deal with rapid development of the county's northeast corridor, and plans to ask for voter approval on a 15-year extension of the half-cent sales tax option, new bond debt and increased school property taxes.

Meanwhile, Superintendent Diana Greene recommended to the board in late 2015 that they not follow the prescribed impact fees set forth in an extensive study the district funded last year and instead recommend that the county commission only levy half of the proposed impact fees, a rate that would be made permanent if the sales tax referendum passed. Despite public opposition, the school board voted unanimously to pass Dr. Greene's recommendation.

At Thursday's meeting, Commissioners Robin DiSabatino and Charles Smith argued against accepting the recommendation and urged the board members to instead adopt the fees at the level proposed by the study, which was very close to the same amount the county had been collecting at the time that the impact fees were suspended.

DiSabatino argued that it was fundamentally unfair to continue to make existing homeowners subsidize the cost of new construction that is increasingly happening where the schools are least adequately equipped to handle population increases.

Commissioner Smith said that he could not find the justice in telling his constituents that there was no money for sidewalks and street lights in their neighborhoods, while they were being asked to subsidize development in luxury communities. Smith also argued that giving the break to developers would serve to rally voters against the referendums, leaving students, teachers and families in his district to suffer when the district was unable to meet its financial needs.