Osceola County and the city of St. Cloud will vote this summer on new impact fees that would add more than $15,000 to the cost of a new home, according to a report in GrowthSpotter.

The city and county on Thursday jointly released their latest impact fee study and will hold public workshops beginning Monday on the proposed fee schedule that more than doubles, and in some cases more than triples, mobility fees for residential construction.

Assistant County Manager Tawny Olore acknowledged the rates would likely be the highest in the state. Osceola County already has the highest school impact fees in Florida.

For single-family homes, the county is proposing to raise the mobility fee from $9,999 per home to $25,012 — a 150% increase. St. Cloud’s proposed rate would increase from $6,442 per home to $20,866, resulting in a 224% increase. The rates for townhomes and apartments would jump an average of about $10,000 per unit.

County planners and their consultants from HNTB presented the recommendations to the county’s Growth Management Task Force, explaining that both the city and county could declare “extraordinary circumstances” to exempt them from state regulations that limit impact fee increases to 50% and requires they be phased in over four years.

Consultant Scott Zornek said both the county and city qualify for the exemption because of their high population growth and soaring construction costs. Just in the past two years, the cost of building new roads in the county rose 46.8% not including the costs of land acquisition or wetland mitigation, he said.

Last year, Osceola leaders said they would have to spend $2 billion more in transportation projects through 2045 to fix the county’s notorious traffic congestion, adding to the hundreds of millions of dollars in projects already started.

State law requires a two-thirds vote by the County Commission and City Council to enact the higher fees. The county has not raised its mobility fees since 2021. The city’s fees were set in 2023.

Lee Steinhauer, government affairs director for the Greater Orlando Builders Association and Apartment Association of Greater Orlando, said his members barely had time to absorb the numbers.

“Everybody is shell-shocked,” he told GrowthSpotter. “These numbers are crazy.”

“Another $15,000 for single family will be difficult to absorb especially with housing affordability being so challenging, and especially for first time homebuyers,” he said. “And for apartment projects these fees are going to be a deal breaker. You’re talking about another $10,000 per unit.”

The staff did not include a carve out for affordable housing but noted that impact fee waivers could be incorporated into the new ordinance.

The staff is proposing to do away with the 25% mobility fee discount that’s currently in place for the county’s mixed-use districts. Olore said the only new development taking place in those areas right now is single-family residential. But Steinhauer said that eliminating the mobility fee discount while also raising fees for apartments and commercial uses will make it cost prohibitive to build town centers in the mixed-use districts.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “They say they want density, but there’s no incentive to build high-density housing, especially in the mixed-use districts.”

The impact on commercial development would also be substantial. For example, the mobility fee for a new grocery store of 48,000 square feet inside the city limits would go from about $426,000 to over $2.5 million. In the county, that grocery store would have to pay over $3 million in mobility fees, a 194% increase over the current rate. The same developer will have have shell out more to develop outparcels, too.

The mobility fees for any type of business with a drive-thru window (QSR, bank, drug store, etc.) would more than double. For fast-food restaurants, the fee would go from about $15,000 to over $100,000, resulting in a 578% increase.

Even offices would see an increase of 56% in the county and 39% in the city.

A handful of categories would see mobility fee reductions based on the study. Those include warehouses, manufacturing facilities, self-storage facilities, and resort hotels.

Osceola County will hold two public workshops on Monday, June 3, and June 10 to present the recommendations, and Commissioners are scheduled to vote during their July 1 meeting.

St. Cloud will hold workshops on June 13 and June 20. The City Council will vote on July 11.

If adopted, the new fees could go into effect as early as Oct. 11. The boards could vote to phase the increases over several years or impose them all at once, Olore said.

Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at lkinsler@GrowthSpotter.com or (407) 420-6261. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook and LinkedIn.