New impact fees a 'responsible course'
Note: Since this letter was received and published, the Osceola County Commission voted to delay decision on increasing impact fees. We will continue to update this topic in the News-Gazette.
Dear Editor:
One thing everyone who has been in Osceola for more than a year complains about is traffic. Population growth in Osceola County is both our blessing and our curse. In 1995 when we moved here the population was about 140,000, now it’s hovering at 450,000. Light traffic was a factor in choosing to move here. In 2024, Osceola is no longer the cow/cattle county it used to be. Now we have SunRail, the 417 and 429 toll roads, Martin Luther King Boulevard in Kissimmee and the St. Cloud Kissimmee Park Road Turnpike exit. Yet with all these additions, traffic is still bad and getting worse.
Our local elected leaders are faced with approving a change in transportation impact fees that are as high as $15,000 per new single-family home, is a steep hike from where they currently are. Impact fees are intended to provide the funding required to help a community keep up with the expenses arising from population growth.
When I was on the Osceola School Board (2002-2018) we had an educational impact fee that went from just over $3,000 per new home to over $9,000 per new home, a 300% hike. Developers came to all of those impact fee meetings to make their case about how the hike in impact fees would stifle new home sales and slow down our local construction economy. Jim Lentz, who at that time was the lead developer for Harmony, was among the most vocal opponents of this increase, and was visibly angry upon the school board approving this 300% impact fee jump.
About six months later, Jim stopped me at a community function to apologize. He told me that the impact fee hike did not slow down sales or construction one bit in Harmony (back then school board members ran countywide). As it turned out, the rise in impact fees did not slow any developers down anywhere in Osceola County at the time.
Developers are wired to always want as low a cost as possible to build their project. Just like when I was on the school board, surely developers and their representatives are lobbying, cajoling, and do all they can to persuade our elected leaders to not impose this new transportation impact fee. They have dusted off the old arguments about how it will negatively impact the local economy. Meanwhile, they offer no solutions to find or provide an alternative revenue source to meet our transportation needs.
Absent another funding source, passing this new fee is the responsible course of action for any of our local elected officials. The developers and their representatives will all do their best to make a case against not passing. If you don’t agree with them, they will reflexively say we “aren’t listening” to them. When they said that to me, my reply was, “Yes, I did listen to you. I just don’t agree with you.” To our local elected leaders, thank you for your public service. Remember your job is to vote for what is right. If it’s popular, that’s a bonus. Approving this transportation impact fee popular or not, is the right thing to do. Growth must pay for itself.
Jay Wheeler
Kissimmee
