Local Government School Board Asked County Not to Collect Impact Fees in '13 and '14

BRADENTON — Over the past week, there have been many questions regarding school impact fees and why the county has not collected them, despite the fact that the ordinance for the fees being suspended expired in 2013. Communications between the county and the school district reveal that despite growth in the northeast corridor of Manatee County, the school district asked the county not to collect the fees in 2013 and again in 2014.

In 2009, the school board, on the advice of then Superintendent Tim McGonegal, first voted to suspend collection of the fees, recommending that the county do so for one year before re-evaluating the potential need for them. The district's position was that the real estate crisis had caused student growth to flat-line and that the 5-year capital plan did not envision a need for new schools (though additions and renovations to existing facilities would begin the next year with borrowed money).

The county commission, which has the ultimate say on the fees, instead voted to suspend school impact fees for two years along with other impact fees it had been levying. In 2011, after conducting an impact fee study that did not include school impact fees, the BOCC extended the moratorium on impact fees, including those for schools, until July of 2013.

As the 2013 expiration approached, the school board, this time on the advice of new superintendent Rick Mills, again voted to recommend that the moratorium be extended for an additional year (unanimous vote on consent agenda), as there was no recent impact fee study in place, nor could one be done before the current moratorium expired. At that point, the district communicated the board's vote to Manatee County Administrator Ed Hunzeker and recommended a new impact fee study to see whether they would be needed when the moratorium again expired in June of 2014.

Mr. Hunzeker responded that if the district planned to ask for the fees to be reinstated in 2014, there would in fact need to be a new study, as the county legal staff did not feel the last study on school impact fees (done in 2002) would meet the state statute's requirement that such fees be based on the “best and most recent data.” Hunzeker suggested that the district contract with an impact fee consultant, as they would need to provide the county with data and information needed to conduct the larger study. He wrote that he would direct county staff to coordinate with the district on the matter.

The district did not move forward with any work toward a study to re-establish impact fees at that time. Instead, in May of 2014, the district again informed Hunzeker that the school board had voted to request still another one-year extension of the moratorium on impact fees (4-1 vote with Miner dissenting), and it was not until earlier this year that the two entities began exploring the possibility of coordinating on an impact fee study to determine whether they would again be implemented.

An interlocal agreement between the two entities to fund and conduct the study will go before the county commission at today's meeting. At last week's meeting, the process described by county officials would not allow for impact fees to be collected until 2016, at the earliest.

The school district now says it will need to begin building new schools in the northeast corridor in 2018 (a total of three new facilities by 2019) and will need to ask taxpayers to approve referendums in 2016 in order to borrow $150 million in bonds and extend the current half-cent sales tax that is set to expire in 2017 in order to fund the construction. District officials say they also plan to ask taxpayers to approve an extra millage point in school property taxes to fund needs on the operations side of the budget.

The district estimates that school impact fees, which are imposed on developers for each new home built in order to help fund the cost of facilities needed to accommodate growth, will bring in just over $6 million a year with current development trends.