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As local governments across the US look to boost their sagging economies, some cities and counties in the Sunbelt are zeroing in on impact fees. In early March, Brevard County, FL, enacted a two-year moratorium on transportation impact fees. Newspaper reports indicate that half a dozen other Florida counties are temporarily waiving fees and several more are considering it. Arthur C Nelson, FAICP, advises governments to think twice about foregoing the money they need to pay for planned improvements or to retire bonds on already completed projects.

As local governments across the country look to boost their sagging economies, some cities and counties in the Sunbelt are zeroing in on impact fees.

In early March, Brevard County, Florida, enacted a two-year moratorium on transportation impact fees. Later that month, the Orlando city council voted to delay by one year a planned increase to its fees. "The hope is that it will be a stimulus for development," Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told the Orlando Sentinel.

Newspaper reports indicate that half a dozen other Florida counties are temporarily waiving fees and several more are considering it. The Florida legislature, in fact, is considering a statewide three-year ban on impact fees.

Arthur C. Nelson, FAICP, advises governments to think twice about foregoing the money they need to pay for planned improvements or to retire bonds on already completed projects. Nelson, the Presidential Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning in the College of Architecture + Planning at the University of Utah and coauthor of APA's upcoming Planners Press book, Impact Fees: Principles and Practices of Proportionate-Share Development Fees, says that cities "need to be prudent about how to go about this, from a financial, legal, planning, and public relations perspective."

Citizens, Nelson notes, "might see their taxes raised to pay for the infrastructure in the future," and developers could call into question the policy rationale for the fees in the first place.

Tucson, Arizona, is taking a different tack, thanks in part to advice from an advisory committee of citizens and developers that raised concerns similar to Nelson's. Chris Kaselemis, aicp, the planning administrator of Tucson's Urban Planning and Design Department, says that the city will defer rather than suspend the collection of impact fees.

Kaselemis, who is also the impact fee administrator, is devising a process in which a developer would make a specified contribution to the affordable housing trust fund when a building permit is issued in order to delay paying impact fees (except emergency services) until the building is ready for occupancy.

-MS