The fee for a single-family detatched home is now just under $4,000. The proposal would raise the fee to $8,000. Other proposed increases could raise the total for a new home by 60 percent.
By CHUIN-WEI YAP and DAVID DeCAMP
Published August 10, 2006
County officials are thinking of doubling road impact fees. The proposed move, combined with other proposed fee increases, would raise total impact fees from $12,000 per home now to $19,000.
The road impact fee increase will be proposed in a draft report due to be completed Friday.
Road impact fees vary widely, depending on the home or business, but the benchmark indicator is a single-family detached home, currently $3,928.
The proposal is to increase the fee to $8,000.
“We’re talking about doubling it,” said Michele Baker, the county’s administrator for engineering services. “That’s mostly because construction costs have doubled in the last two years.”
The news of the latest proposed increase comes a day after commissioners added $3,000 to impact fees for parks, water and sewer services and law enforcement projects.
If the road impact fee recommendation also comes to pass, this means new residents face $19,000 in impact fees overall – a nearly 60 percent increase.
Impact fees vary widely from county to county, depending on how built-out it is and what types of services are charged. A broad comparison: Pasco currently charges $12,000 on a single-family home. Hernando County charges $9,200. Pinellas County charges $2,100.
In Pasco, the proposed road impact fee increase also is blamed on an expected $7-million shortfall in revenue next fiscal year, largely because of the decline in residential growth this year.
Sales have dropped 15 percent to 75 percent among builders, said Alex Mourtakos, president of the Pasco Building Association.
Revenue from road impact fees went from $29-million in 2004-05 to $37-million in the current fiscal year but is expected to fall to $30-million in 2006-07, said Manny Lajmiri of Pasco’s Metropolitan Planning Organization.
The county also has reduced its list of planned road projects because it reflects many outdated schedules.
“None of those dates can really be depended on,” Baker said.
Projects to be dropped include the Moon Lake Road widening, the completion of the Ridge Road extension to the Suncoast Parkway and improvements to Power Line Road and Clinton Avenue in the Dade City area.
Baker said these projects would be reworked into a longer-range road improvement plan.
“This is staff’s first cut at it,” Baker said. “(County Administrator John) Gallagher has seen it, and he doesn’t like it. He wants the projects done more quickly.”
The report on road fee revisions, by Tindale-Oliver & Associates of Tampa, will be presented to Gallagher and key county staff members before it makes its way to county commissioners.
The report also will include recommendations to phase in the changes over a period of years – possibly six – and to index future increases to some form of market indicator, Baker said.
“We could be looking at adoption by the end of the calendar year,” Baker said.
Since the burden of impact fee hikes fall on new consumers, the report also includes recommendations on reduced fee schedules to preserve some semblance of affordable housing in Pasco, Baker said.
Mourtakos said the fee hikes are so new that the association has not had time to discuss whether to challenge the increases.
“It would be foolhardy for me to sit here and not say the people who are agreeing to build houses will pass on the cost to the consumer,” Mourtakos said.
Times staff writer Will Van Sant contributed to this report.
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