Feed the fee beast

With development on the rebound across the region, it's little surprise the scrooge of builder activity — impact fees and taxes — has made a loud return.

Lee County Commissioners, for starters, in a vote earlier this year, approved a measure to more than double the fees. That bumped it from $2,942 per new home to $6,131 per home. It could have been worse: Lee Building Industry Association officials persuaded the county from fully reinstating the tax to its pre-recession levels for at least three years.

Late last month Sarasota County officials set their own plan in motion, with a study that recommends increases in the tax that in some cases could go higher than Lee. Sarasota officials are currently analyzing a report that suggests an 80% impact fee hike in homes less than 1,500 square feet; a 36% increase for homes with 1,500 to 3,499 square feet; and 34% for homes larger than 3,500 square feet. That would make impact fees as high as $6,683.

Then there's Manatee County. Commissioners there are considering proposals that could raise impact taxes to levels that would easily best the previous boom cycle. One proposal would increase fees by 50% in 2016 over 2009 and double the fee by 2018.

While anti-growth activists tend to push for and praise any increase in impact fees, builders lament that a hike will be passed on to consumers. That will lead to fewer home sales, and in turn and a slowdown in development that could ultimately lead to fewer fees collected.

“You keep adding these dollar amounts,” Manatee-Sarasota Building Industry Association CEO Jon Mast says, in a story in the Sarasota Observer, sister paper of the Business Observer, “and it's going to start pricing people out of these things.”