Lake County Scoop: County Commissioner Leslie Campione discloses plan for school impact fee waivers

Tavares, FL                 Sept. 19, 2016

Lake County Commissioner Leslie Campione explains impact fee waiver plan to School Board

Scoop: At this morning's Lake County, FL School Board meeting they heard a new proposal to mitigate impact fee constraints on local builders and incentives to build on "infill" lots within older city centers. Lake County Board member Leslie Campione showed up with a well researched plan to ask School Board input on limited school impact fee waivers on infill construction within 3 miles of city centers or within 2 miles of under-capacity schools (they have vacancy for new students).

 

Update Tuesday, Sept 20 - The Daily Commercial reporter was not at this meeting, but apparently watched it on video and wrote THIS story for Sept 20.  That's why they don't have pictures of the actual meeting.  

 

The proposal is intended to offset demands from the local builders to reduce impact fees on new construction, typically for individual, older residential lots that already have infrastructure like water, sewer and streets (and schools nearby). Campione wanted school board input before presenting the plan to the County Board. Based upon certain requirements, a builder / owner could get 100% off the school and perhaps road impact fees, saving $10,000 or more.

 

Watch for more details on FiscalRangers.com with links to the maps. Of course this is a preliminary plan that would require County Board and School Board approvals, but Campione has it well documented. The best details will be on the video of the presentation which should be on the School Board website at some point. There would be a cap on waivers of 10% of total impact fees collected per year in the county, since other revenues must make up the waivers. Thus if school impact fee collections for the entire county were $12-million, only $1.2-million would be available for waivers.  If the waivers were an average of $10,000 per house, the cap would be taken by just 120 houses.  (This is somewhat complex, so you would need to watch the meeting video to understand many of the issues AND the conditions to approve the waivers which could change during the approval process).  

 

These waivers may offset demands now from local builders who want impact fees reduced everywhere, and allow most of the existing impact fees to remain in place so schools can be funded to meet growth.

 

Note:  This method of variable impact fees based upon closeness to infrastructure is similar to a method we described in a 2009 FiscalRangers.com article and how it was used in Charlotte County, FL where a sliding scale of impact fees was used based on proximity to exising infrastructure.

 

Pictures: Lake County Commissioner Leslie Shamrock Campione talking to the Lake County School Board with two maps - one showing areas within 2 miles of under-capacity schools that would qualify for 25-75% waivers depending on how many schools were nearby, and the other showing a radius of 3 miles around city centers that would qualify up to 100% waivers. She is talking to a reporter from the newspaper that won't let me read online articles (free) in the last picture.

 

This map is hard to see but showed areas within 2 miles of under-capacity schools that would qualify for waivers

 

This map shows 3 mile radius areas around city centers that would qualify for the impact fee waivers

 

Leslie Campione answers questions from Orlando Sentinel reporter