During the housing crisis in the mid-2000s many local governments across the state
suspended impact fees hoping to jump-start a flat-lining housing market.
Impact fees are paid to municipal governments that collect them ahead of permits being issued for new commercial buildings, developments and even single-family homes.
They are meant to pay for the future needs — or impact — that the new development will have on infrastructure such as roads and services like EMS.
So when the housing markets came back in coastal areas of Florida, so too did the impact fees. But slower-growth areas like Glades County haven’t been so quick to tack-on what many consider to be hefty fees.
Though the fees here were suspended 18 years ago, many in this rural and fiscally constrained county are still divided: Do the fees help or hinder?
Commissioner Jeffrey Patterson falls on the hinder side.
"It’s my personal belief, an impact fee is the quickest way to slow growth. If that's what we're trying to do, if we're trying to slow growth, if we're trying to make it where nothing can come in here, that's the way to do it," Patterson said.
Patterson does see a need for fees to pay for additional schools. He and other members of the county commission were told at a public hearing recently that had the county not suspended the fees and the growth stayed the same, $1.4 million in impact fees would have been collected.
Patterson doesn’t see that as a missed opportunity. He believes no fees is what has helped drive long-term growth.
Board chairman Tim Stanley has a different take. He wants to stop missing the opportunity to build up accounts to pay for the growth that he predicts will happen in Glades -- with or without impact fees.
“There is growth coming, whether you believe it or not. But there's a lot of growth coming," he said.
The final public hearing on re-instating impact fees in Glades set for is June 22.
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