After months of controversy, Osceola County Commissioners enacted the state’s highest fees on new development to pay for transportation improvements.

The hefty “mobility fees” will provide a critically needed source of funding for road and rail improvements in a rapidly growing county where traffic has grown increasingly oppressive. But in a bow to opposition to the fee levels from the business community, the county will give developers a little over nine months before they take effect.

“The biggest complaint I receive in my community is our transportation network,” Commissioner Brandon Arrington said, after noting that previous boards had waived the fees to encourage new development, which has led to sprawl and gridlock. “We should have done this three years ago.”

The 4-1 vote Monday came after more than a dozen speakers, mostly from the development and real estate industry, objected.

The fee for new single-family homes would more than double from the current rate of $10,000 to $21,710. The rate for new apartments would go from $7,754 per unit to $14,040, representing an 81% increase. The fees would be levied on development in Osceola County that occurs outside of city limits.

Commissioner Ricky Booth, a former school board member, was unconvinced by the speakers’ testimony, saying he’d heard it all before from developers who warned that the fees would destroy the local economy.

“That’s what I heard 10 years ago in 2014 when we were passing an impact fee for the school district,” he said. “I heard the exact same things again in 2018 when we went to pass another increase to the impact fees as a school board member — the exact same things. None of them ended up to be true, maybe to a certain small extent or anything.”

The rationale behind impact fees for schools and transportation is that new development boosts the number of students schools must serve and the number of commuters on the roads. Osceola County commissioned a consultant’s study in an effort to justify the level of mobility fees it sought, but developers argued the study’s assumptions and calculations were deeply flawed.

Commissioner Peggy Choudhry was the only commissioner to vote against the mobility fee proposal. She said she wanted to see a proposal that would have phased in the increase over several years.

Choudhry also worried that the higher rates would hinder new commercial development in the tourism corridor, especially for restaurants.

Elliott Jamison, developer of a mixed-use project on U.S. 192 that’s home to the Jamison apartments and Miller’s Ale House, said Choudhry’s concerns about restaurants and retail are valid. “We have two restaurants that we’re currently working that are in jeopardy, one of which told us, if this goes through, wow, no, thank you, Osceola County,” he said.

Commissioner Viviana Janer also had reservations about the ordinance, which the county has revised three times in recent months in response to the objections. Her biggest concerns were the potential effect on affordable housing development and the implementation schedule.

But she swung her vote in favor of the ordinance, giving the commission the supermajority required to hike the fees, after the staff added provisions that allow the county to waive mobility fees for affordable housing on a case-by-case basis and delay the implementation until 2025.

The county could have implemented the new fees as early as Dec. 18, but County Manager Don Fisher suggested they wait until June 18 so the building department wouldn’t be slammed with new permits in December.

Apartment developer Mike Mullhall told commissioners he knew of at least six multifamily projects in the development pipeline that would die on the vine if the fees went into effect on the earlier date. Losing those projects would cost the county about $48 million in mobility fees and property taxes, he said.

Ultimately, the board reached a consensus on the June 18 date but stated that developers must apply for their building permits by May 18. If the permit hasn’t been issued by June 18, the applicant could ask for an extension.

The City of St. Cloud is scheduled to vote Sept. 19 on its own mobility fee ordinance, which like Osceola’s greatly increases the existing level. Councilman Shawn Fletcher reached out to the county last week asking the board to hold a joint city-county workshop before the vote, but no such workshop has been scheduled.

Lee Steinhauer, government liaison for Greater Orlando Builders Association, said there’s still hope that the city will vote against the higher fees.

“The fact that they wanted to have a joint meeting, I think, shows that they certainly wanted to discuss it further with the county before they moved forward,” he said.

Steinhauer said it’s too soon to say if GOBA will challenge the rates in Osceola.

“The hearing was just this afternoon, and so folks are still trying to process it,” he said. “And I’m sure there will be some meetings regarding what if any next steps there might be. So those will all be evaluated in terms of what the options might be going forward.”

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