Impact fees ensure that new development helps pay for the increased transportation, parks, schools, fire protection, and emergency medical services that will be needed by that development.
Attached is the latest Lee County impact fee revenue report, which includes actual data through May 31, 2019. There are three tables to this report: a summary of revenues collected and lost since the beginning of the impact fee reductions on March 13, 2013; a 6-year summary table by fiscal year (FY 2014, FY 2015, FY 2016, FY 2017, FY 2018, and FY 2019 to date) of impact fee revenues (collected and lost); and a quarterly report for FY 2019. As of May 31, 2019, a total of $125 million has been lost over the past 6 years due to the BoCC’s impact fee reduction policies. Of that total, $62 million would have gone to County Administration programs ($48 million for roads), and $62 million to the School District.
These are not projections; they are actual revenue numbers from the County’s Office of Community Development monthly reports. The “revenues lost” number is simply subtracting what was collected (at 20% rate through May 2015; and 45% from June 2015 to the present) from the full rate (100% rate) to arrive at the difference (55% =the lost revenues). This represents the unfunded infrastructure costs incurred with the approved permits.
What this means is that over the past 6 years the county has permitted residential and commercial development that necessitates $203 million in infrastructure costs for new or expanded infrastructure to support that development (based on the state-mandated impact fee update studies). In March 2018, the Board adopted the updated “Duncan Reports” that calculate the actual capital costs of public infrastructure need that is generated by the development, which sets the 100% impact fee rate. To read the full report click here.
• However, the county has collected only $78 million of the $203 million deemed necessary to cover those costs. The $125 million deficit will need to be covered somehow in the future. Of that total loss, 39% was for roads, 50 % was for schools, and 11% was for parks.
In the first seven months of FY 2019, the county lost an average of $1.23 million a month in road impact fees and $1.75 million a month in school impact fees.
• If this average monthly loss continues, between now and when the extension expires in March 2023, the BoCC programs alone (roads and parks) could lose an estimated $100 million more in impact fees, for an overall total 10-year revenue potential loss of $225 million, excluding the revenue losses to the School District (which could total as much as $146 million). By 2023, the grand total impact fee revenues losses as a result of this commission’s impact fee reduction policy decisions (over 10 years: 2013-2023) could be a whopping $370 million.