Developers and their puppets have ensured that growth will not pay for itself

This week, Manatee County’s propaganda department lauded its developer-funded lackeys for “proposing an impact fee increase.” Let’s take a closer look at what actually happened.

There has long existed a myth that communities can grow themselves to prosperity, that even rampant development merely grows the tax base. Although developer lackeys still peddle this myth, we have known for the better part of half a century that growth does not even pay for itself, let alone add revenue to the tax base.

By the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, much of Florida was awash with problems associated with unplanned growth. Schools and jails were overcrowded, inadequate roadways led to congestion and gridlock, and water and sewage infrastructure remained largely insufficient.

These issues had been addressed mainly through governments bonding debt and issuing property tax increases, forcing existing residents to pay handsomely in order to subsidize the actual cost of additional growth. Impact fees were introduced by the legislature in 1985 as a way for communities to demand that new growth paid for itself, and strict rules as to how they were to be collected and spent were put in place.

Even under these circumstances, communities were only able to collect about 90 percent of the actual costs associated with growth, with multiple studies showing that for every dollar growth brought in, around $1.25 in services were required to support it. Yet, as imperfect as the system may have been, it still represented an enormous improvement.

Developers have always hated the impact fee system because it slightly reduces their profits. Yes, they will go on and on as to how it is passed along to the homebuyer, but a house, like anything else, sells for the maximum price that the market will bear. If the fee is reduced or eliminated, the price simply goes up to capture the additional spending capacity that has been created, the same way that lower interest rates have an inverse relationship with housing prices.

Why else would developers spend so much time and money lobbying for reduced impact fees? To help struggling homebuyers? If that were the case, they would eagerly comply with the county’s policy regarding increased density credits and workforce housing units instead of fighting tooth and nail to get more density without providing affordable units.

Manatee County began collecting impact fees in 1986. The process was largely uneventful until Ed Hunzeker, Manatee County Administrator from 2007-2019, bent to the will of developers and slashed impact fees under the bogus notion that it would help the county during the Great Recession.

Since 2009, impact fees have never again been collected at 100 percent of what the required studies have determined to be necessary. This is mainly because Hunzeker introduced the equally nonsensical notion that collecting more than 90 percent of what had been prescribed would place the county in legal jeopardy, an idea that the county attorney’s office has not concurred with.

The foot-dragging on making developers pay their way has spanned numerous boards and administrations, so there is plenty of blame to go around. However, former Manatee County Administrator Cheri Coryea did deliver an updated impact fee study to the board in December 2020, shortly before being fired at the behest of local developers. Coryea was replaced by developer lackey Scott Hopes in 2021, and in the nearly two years that Hopes was administrator, the matter was never brought before the board.

The county later cited concerns with the age of the data, and the study was updated in April of last year after Hopes had been let go. The board voted to move the impact fee study forward for a hearing and a vote. It was placed on the hearing list for August. It was then delayed without explanation multiple times between August and November, before inexplicably disappearing from the hearing calendar altogether.

In November, new administrator Charlie Bishop and the other developer toadies in his administration, including Deputy County Administrator Courtney De Pol and Director of Development Services Nicole Knapp, began echoing developers’ concerns with the methodology used in the most recent study. Board members, led by developer puppet-in-chief Kevin Van Ostenbridge, argued that moving the impact fees from 90 to 100 percent of the previous 2015 study’s prescribed rates would be more prudent, and the board voted to move in that direction.

The public backlash was loud and swift, and with Van Ostenbridge and other developer-friendly commissioners up for reelection this year, the board pivoted to something that the public would likely find more palatable. However, developers had already sought and secured changes to state laws that limited a community’s ability to increase impact fees, regardless of whatever needs the required studies prescribed. By current statute (which was amended during the 2021 legislative session), the most that a board can increase impact fees through the normal process is 50 percent, and it must do so in four equal annual increases. Increases of more than 12.5% but less than 25% must be phased in equally over two years.

There is, however, a process by which the county could avoid the phase-in process and levy the total amount of necessary fees. It must first provide a calculation as to how it arrived at the need for the amount based on “the most recent and localized data,” which the county has already done. It would 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) would be required.

This is obviously very doable, but the developers who run your local government do not want to pay for the cost of the growth they profit so handsomely from, much more so after using their influence to secure far more density than they were entitled to when they purchased their land holdings. Moreover, six of your seven county commissioners do precisely what their developer sugar daddies tell them to.

As a result, after years and years of impact fees being kept artificially low in order to fatten developers' bottom lines, they will slowly increase to an amount that remains far less than currently required. Anyone who tells you that is a victory does not represent your best interests.

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.