{"id":35206,"date":"2015-03-02T13:36:03","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T18:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=35206"},"modified":"2015-03-02T13:36:03","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T18:36:03","slug":"my-take-on-impact-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2015\/03\/my-take-on-impact-fees\/","title":{"rendered":"My Take on Impact Fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charlie Whitehead (Used by Permission) Byline Charlie Whitehead<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"A certain Lee County commissioner is right in his NP opinion that there is misinformation about impact fees. He is either ignorant of its sources or willfully misleading. Builders and developers have always told the lie that impact fees hurt the building economy. Every study I have ever seen that wasn\u2019t paid for by a builder\/developer group disputes that. The factor that controls new home pricing is profit. Period. Spend as little as possible to build the house and sell it for all the market will bear. Only a complete lack of media institutional memory and understanding allows those lies to carry weight.<\/p>\n

The commissioner says impact fees were used to push the city south and the gated communities east. The decisions that allowed the sprawl we have seen were not caused by impact fees. The decisions were made by county commissioners \u2013 commissioners who, now more than at any time since the 1980\u2019s, were selected by builder\/developer money. Including the one making the false statements to the NP.<\/p>\n

Spending of impact fees is not limited to new roads, new schools and new parks. I think it\u2019s just possible the commissioner believes it is, though he might be parroting the line his builder\/developer funders feed him. Impact fees are spent on NEW CAPACITY. It is not some esoteric fine point. Adding square footage to schools. Adding lanes to existing roads. Adding infrastructure at existing parks. All of these can be accomplished with impact fees.<\/p>\n

This argument is part of a bait-and-switch builders, with the support of county shills, have run on taxpayers for years. For example with impact fee funding coming in the school district used impact fee revenue to buy land and build schools. With impact fee revenue not coming in the school district must find other sources for that funding. Those sources are the same ones that pay teachers, buy school books and do all the other things the district must do.<\/p>\n

The commissioner\u2019s use of \u2018an 8-lane flyover\u2019 to scare residents is unconscionable. Again, the decision to build or not build a flyover is made by locally-elected officials. If they decide to build a flyover it is not because there is an impact fee revenue stream.<\/p>\n

For the commissioner to credit himself and the other commissioners with national\/worldwide economic changes that increased local building numbers is hugely arrogant. Commissioners axed the impact fees as a pay-back to those who put them in office, raided Conservation 2020 funding to plug the budget hole they created and now want credit for the economic changes that coincidentally took place on their watch. Do not allow them to sell these lies.<\/p>\n

\u2018The plan proved successful\u2019? Is that success illustrated by the huge lines of traffic we are currently suffering? Is it the radically reduced capital budget that seems destined to make things worse for the next several years? Is it the proposed\u00a0new sales tax for school construction commissioners have foisted on the school district and on taxpayers?<\/p>\n

The commissioner says that a choice between higher taxes and impact fees is a lie. There is a grain of truth there. Commissioners need not choose between higher taxes and impact fees. They can choose to simply allow the services citizens demand \u2013 and have paid for \u2013 to continue to deteriorate. If this is the choice they are making then they should tell citizens that.<\/p>\n

For them to attack growth management and planning advocates for \u2018blatantly sharing misinformation\u2019 is laughable, or it would be if he was not in a position to decide. If they are in office to make sure the builders and developers and speculators who put him in office make lots of money then they should be honest and say that. If he is truly a servant of the people, as he so often claims to be, then he will take steps to make sure growth pays for growth. For the growth will come. The only questions is whether those who profit from it will pay the cost it creates or whether the rest of us will. Either the commissioner knows that and is willfully misleading citizens or he is too uninformed to be a commissioner.<\/p>\n

Some will point out that when I ran for office\u00a0 I said I would consider reducing impact fees. That is true. I said I would consider reducing impact fees short-term as long as another revenue source, something like a mobility fee, was explored. It wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The 4-1 vote that commissioners took to continue the 80 percent reduction after a year was a dark moment for the county. It was obvious to everyone who wasn\u2019t a builder or in one\u2019s pocket that the reduction was costing the county (taxpayers) desperately-needed funding it would never get back. It was obvious that the larger global changes were increasing local building. It was obvious that the reduction was unnecessary.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately it was also obvious who commissioners really work for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charlie Whitehead (Used by Permission) Byline Charlie Whitehead A certain Lee County commissioner is right in his NP opinion that there is misinformation about impact fees. He is either… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}