By Ken Jackson
Staff Writer

For a Monday, the transportation business in Osceola County had a pretty good day.

At the meeting of the Board of Osceola County Commissioners, the commission finally did away with road impact fees, voting to repeal — for good — the 24-year-old assessment on new commercial and residential construction, which were some of the highest rates in Florida.

The commission, in order to provide businesses flexibility in a tough economy, placed a moratorium for fees on new commercial construction in January 2011 and expanded it to all new residential construction in June 2011.

In December 2010, prior to the moratorium, average annual collections were reduced from $10.6 million to under $4 million for that year.

The impact fees, with Monday’s vote, are now permanently eliminated, but all current agreements and consent orders for payment of fees remain in effect. The balance of remaining fees will be applied to the expansion of Old Lake Wilson Road and a pair of projects on Poinciana Boulevard.

Joe Volpe, of the Osceola chapter of the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando, lauded the commission for its vision.

“This is a standard other communities are looking at, believe it or not,” he said. “This sends a message that Osceola County is ‘open for business.’”

According to the county’s figures, in the nearly two years since the fees were suspended, $106 million in commercial construction has been started, nearly one million square feet of commercial business space has been added, and permits for 1,045 new homes were applied for. Because of all that, “hundreds of jobs in the construction and service sectors” were created, officials said.

Commission Chairman John Quiñones echoed that sentiment at Monday’s meeting.

“The fees were cumbersome on businesses and hindered the streamlining of government,” he said. “We need to make sure we are a business-friendly environment right now.”

County staff also brought to the board an ordinance to establish the Urban Growth Transportation System — in part an equal reaction to the final repeal of the impact fees — but action was held over until Oct. 8 for a scheduled public hearing on the matter.

The initiative would put in place measures to improve maintenance conditions on roadways, and rebalance future projects within existing revenues without proposing new taxes, such as a second local gas tax. Its approach would be long-term in order to wait out the tough economic conditions currently present, and would be funded by the creation of a Designated Ad Valorem (DAT) trust fund.

Larry Walter, chair of the county’s Growth Management Task Force, who noted that the plan was an “urban transportation system with a lot of community redevelopment language,” voiced concerns over the plan. The board considered adding wording to the ordinance that funding, once the system’s trust fund is in place, be provided exclusively for transportation projects. The commission will take that up on Oct. 8.

Wayne Rich, representing the Northeast District, an area south of Lake Nona and the expanding UCF Medical City, asked that area receive an exemption from coverage under the plan. The district is covered under its unique Multimodal Transportation District (MMTD), and its transportation needs for roads coming south out of Medical City, and east out of the Kissimmee area like an extension of Osceola Parkway past Boggy Creek Road, part of the Expressway Authority’s 2040 master plan, are still in the conceptual phase.