Daily Loaf

You probably already know that growth does not pay for itself and taxpayers are left holding the bill for things like roads, fire safety and parks despite what politicians would like you to believe. Impact fees should be funding these things, yet they don’t even come close. In fact, according to a recent audit done by the Clerk of the Circuit Court’s office, they don’t even fund the program it takes to monitor them!

An audit to be presented to the Hillsborough County Commission on Wednesday had some disturbing findings including: (my thoughts are in red)

Observation 1: The BOCC has not been assured that the impact fees were spent as directed by ordinance 96-29. (WTF?)

Observation 2: The current impact fee assessment for transportation, right of way, parks, and fire networks may not be covering a reasonable percentage of the cost of growth within the County. (Ya think?)

Observation 3: The County’s Real Estate Dept does not charge a fee for their land appraisals. (Yet county staff suggests we should get an appraisal on Cone Ranch costing a fortune!)

Photo credit: .res @Flickr.com

Oh, those are not the only disturbing findings in the report. Some others include:

Finding 1: The costs to administer the program are not fully funded by the impact fees. (No wonder they want us to approve a new 1% tax to pay for roads and rail.)

Finding 3: Impact fees were incorrectly calculated and assessed. (Even with our highly paid Bean counters?)

Finding 4: Revenue from receipt of permitting fees could be lost or misappropriated. (Or just used for another of Pat Bean’s raises to herself or faves!)

Finding 5: Offset accounts can be overstated or unauthorized which can cause unnecessary accounting for the Impact Fee staff. (Don’t forget those furlough days!)

You can see their full audit here.

To add to that, this FIELD report shows that Hillsborough County only charges a measly 12% of the legal limit for roads. Some elected officials are trying to get you to buy their spiel for rail (but still pay for roads) by admitting we are billions behind in roads. Funny, I never heard some of the same officials admit that while they were happily approving more sprawl.

We are billions behind in transportation because of their past and current developer welfare practices. Their sprawl-happy approvals of more rooftops has left us with congested roads, lower home values  and a flooded housing market. And while the state is slowly starting to show signs of recovery with a boost in home sales, Hillsborough still lags way behind.

Not to mention our County has a history of not telling the truth about what developers really do pay for roads anyway. You and I would probably call that lying, they would probably call it miscalculating.

If our County Commission doesn’t increase impact fees to meet the needs, then they will continue the welfare of the past which has contributed to the shortfalls of the present.  You can ask them here how they think giving developers a free ride on the backs of taxpayers with inadequate impact fees somehow adds up to being fiscally conservative, which many of them claim to be.

Commissioners should increase impact fees and show they are willing to make growth attempt to pay for itself. And they should do it before they have the nerve to ask us to tax ourselves in order to pay for their past sins, footing the bill for the infrastructure to catch up. Instead, what was their recent solution to the housing glut? As Mariella Smith informed us in this article, it was more houses! Now they want you to further subsidize this practice of developer welfare by voting to tax yourself  in part for roads via a 1% sales tax. Is that a pig I see flying by?

I am all for letting the people decide, in fact I am a big supporter of Florida Hometown Democracy (FHD) Amendment 4, which, if passed will allow you and I to have the final say on things like bid subdivisions instead of trusting our politicians to do it. When it comes to this “rail” referendum, though, they need to be honest about just what they are asking us to tax ourselves for and why. Some might say it is the future, but considering that only 37% actually goes to rail according to this article (and the rest goes to roads, buses and other non rail projects) I have to say the scales are tipped toward paying for past mistakes instead of the future. Seems more like a developer/politician bailout to me.

In addition I have not seen a plan that attempts to explain how we pay for the rest, except for hope of federal contributions. Since the new administration in Washington seems to have their own adaptation of that Doritos commercial — spend all ya want, we’ll make more — maybe they will help. Ask the folks trying to keep Tri-Rail on life support in South Florida how easy it is to get state or federal funding.

Oh and if you think it is bad that roads, fire and parks are underfunded by impact fees, developers are not even charged what it costs to go through the motions of a re-zoning or Comp Plan amendment, only adding to their taxpayer-funded developer bailouts. Seems like politicians would rather have all taxpayers foot the bill  than charge an appropriate fee for service to the developers. If people were aware of this practice I wonder how much it would impact their vote to give government an additional 1% sales tax to fund rail and roads.

If the true rail proponents really want this to pass, I think they need to present us with a much better plan that includes: 1. Raising impact fees for developers to contribute to road costs (then they wouldn’t have to use so much of the proposed sales tax for that) 2. Provide a growth plan associated with rail that does not allow developers to amend it at the drop of a hat (or the writing of a campaign contribution check)……..give us the power of veto on the ballot even if FHD doesn’t pass. 3. Make the list on non-rail projects respectable instead of controversial or delete the list altogether and use the full 1% for rail because even that is just a drop in the bucket anyway. Come on, elected officials pushing rail in Hillsborough, make this effort worth supporting!

Ironically, the rail referendum discussion is also supposed to take place at Wednesday’s County Commission meeting. I wonder if anybody will connect the dots from meager impact fees to our shortfall in road funding? Don’t hold your breath.

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