City considers fee revisions

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City considers fee revisions

County News

Friday, 19 November 2010 21:16

By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer
At the first meeting of the new St. Cloud City Council Thursday evening following the Nov. 2 election, members faced tough decisions about ways to promote local business development through lower impact fees.
During the first of two public hearings, the council voted unanimously to revise the way city water and sewage impact fees are charged to businesses by basing them on the size of the water meter serving the property, not on factors such as the number of seats a restaurant might have or the number of bay doors in a warehouse.
The city charges impact fees to pay for infrastructure, such as new roads, storm drainage and sewer and water lines.
Currently, impact fees for businesses start at the level equal to a residential unit and are then converted in various ways to represent a certain kind of business. As proposed, these impact fees would be assessed based on the size of the water meter, which monitors actual water usage of the building. If a business needed to upgrade to a larger meter, the owner would just pay the difference associated between the two meter sizes.
“It takes away a lot of the grey area,” Todd Swingle, public services administrator, said. “It very much simplifies this process.”
Swingle told the council that new or expanding businesses could see a savings of up to 50 percent, depending on the type of business.
“I think we’re headed in the right direction on impact fees now,” Mayor Rebecca Borders said. “It’s a good compromise between city and business; the city takes a little less and it helps the business.”
Borders did say she suggested to Swingle during her briefing that impact fees be reviewed annually or every two years to ensure the system is fair to businesses and to the city, with the latter counting on the revenue generated by impact fees.
If the ordinance revising the fees passes on second reading at the Dec. 9 council meeting, the changes would go into effect immediately.
In other city business, the council:
• Approved a resolution to conduct a traffic impact fee study, which could potentially change the way these fees are calculated. The last study was conducted in 2006.
• Voted unanimously to add a year to each discount percentage on the impact fee schedule.
In 2009, a previous council approved a discount system on a sliding scale that allowed a 25 percent discount on impact fees and slid downward to 15 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2012. The new resolution pushes those dates back one year and continues the 25 percent reduction of certain impact fees in 2011.
• Approved waiving the annual inflation adjustment for sewer and water impact fees.
“We need to build a reputation as pro-business and business-friendly,” Councilman Tom Griffin said.
• Councilman Russell Holmes suggested creating a survey for new businesses to garner suggestions on ways the city could improve the process of opening a business in St. Cloud.
• Unanimously approved waiving the annual inflation adjustment for sanitary sewer service and reclaimed water service to residents for 2011.
• Refused to entertain a resolution that would allow three companies to become construction managers at risk for city contracts. That would have allowed a company to oversee a city project and to hire subcontractors to complete certain pieces of a job, without those subcontracts going out for bid.
Two of the companies—Quinn Commercial and Theobald Construction — are based in St. Cloud. The third contractor, Ruby Builders, is based in Orlando.
Councilman Jarom Fertic said approving the resolution would keep local businesses from consideration. He requested the item be voted on separately from the consent agenda and, without a motion, the resolution died.
• And Mickey Hopper was unanimously voted in to serve as deputy mayor. Hopper also was deputy mayor from March 2005-06 and again from August 2007 to March 2008.