Commissioners vote to raise, reinstate impact fees, defying developer lawsuit threats

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Posted May 28, 2025 | By Jennifer Hunt Murty
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The Marion County Board of Commissioners voted on May 23 to raise impact fees and reinstate others starting Oct. 1 to offset the rising costs of transportation improvements and fire services brought on by new residential and business development.

After hours of discussion, the commissioners decided to reinstate fire/EMS fees at 100% of the calculated rate without any public comments against it.

However, the question of increasing impact fees for roads brought hours of debate, including threats of lawsuits from local developers.

The commissioners decided to assess transportation impact fees at 70% and increase them over three years until they equal 100% of the calculated rate recommended by consultants, Benesch. The developers had urged the board to start at 50% and increase from there.

Impact fees are one-time assessments only on new construction and are paid when a certificate of occupancy is obtained- the exception under this ordinance will be government agencies and private schools.

Revenue from impact fee and sales tax cannot be used for operations costs, which means the funds can only be used to address a portion of the costs incurred to grow infrastructure. Personnel costs to meet growth needs must be funded elsewhere. Marion County voters in November approved raising the sales tax.

Commissioner Matt McClain opposed the level of the road impact fees, calling it a mistake and accusing the commissioners of setting rates higher than what the county needs. He added that the fees will hurt first-time home buyers and raise property values, thus raising property taxes.

“This only helps the big developers and big builders and hurts the local small builders because they’re able to shuffle around these costs more,” he said. “So, this all together is not good the way that we’re doing it. So, I’m a no vote.”

McClain told commissioners that he’d talked with his father, former Commissioner Stan McClain, about the issue, his father said the county’s list of road projects was backed up even when he was on the board.

Now a state senator, Stan McClain represents Marion County and previously served as a commissioner for Marion County for 12 years. He reports the bulk of his personal income through the years has come from the legislative work he’s done for the Marion County Builder’s Association and home building. In his financial disclosures, David Tillman, the association’s current president, is identified as McClain’s largest client

Two commercial impact fee categories brought increased debate over standalone car washes and fast food restaurants. The commissioners decided to revisit the fee schedule for those two categories in another public meeting after considering specialized data.

Despite the fee schedule, which centers around the type of business it is, the commissioners indicated that developers could do their own traffic studies in support of projects that would not generate as much traffic as the category generally predicts. Additionally, state laws make it difficult for them to raise impact fees once they were implemented, but the commission retains the authority to reduce them if the economy worsened or if they collect more revenue than needed.

In 2015, the commission significantly cut back impact fees in response to economic downturns. This made Marion County less expensive to build in than most growing counties in the state and fueled its growth, particularly by out-of-town builders.

Despite the 10-year reprieve, the local building community and the local Chamber of Economic Partnership (CEP) objected to the impact fee increase, recommending that the commission implement fees at 50% of what the consultants recommended and raise them incrementally over four years.

Public comment

Micanopy resident Bruce Atkinson told the commission, “I support immediately increasing the impact fees to the 100% recommended rate to help get us out of our infrastructure deficit.”

“Voters are not afraid of paying their fair share,” he said. “Madam Chair, as you noted, voters supported the penny sales tax for another 20 years. They also voted to approve additional taxes for public school capital improvements, and we are all paying increased property taxes directly or indirectly. It’s time developers pay their share as well.”

Atkinson, along with other speakers, urged the commission “to reject any request from a developer or business for a tax subsidy, tax relief or grant, because that is just shifting that tax burden to every other voter in Marion County.”

Tom Fisher, a former city of Ocala councilman who currently volunteers on the county’s Planning and Zoning Commission, described the current road infrastructure as at “crisis levels, and we got a deficit here and we need you to get all you can.”

“I think growth needs to pay for itself. We’re subsidizing growth in two ways, higher taxes and lower quality of life. I’m supporting this [impact fees] and I wish you do whatever you can [to assess impact fees],” he said.

Ken Ausley of Ausley Construction told the commission he thought people may be confused about who actually pays the impact fee.

“I don’t know if people understand how this works,” he said. “Builders don’t pay impact fees. Builders pass impact fees on to end users. I’ve been building for 20-something years in this community. I’ve never paid a single dime of impact fees. It goes directly to the end user.”

Ausley argued impact fees are a “tax for normal citizens who want to buy houses and buy hamburgers and go through car washes. I agree they need to go higher, but I think funding them at the 100% [calculated rate] doesn’t make sense when your study says somewhere between 72% and 84% would fund needs. I think we should be more at the 50% [calculated rate] level.”

Other developers like On Top of the World had their attorneys threaten lawsuits if the impact fees are implemented at more than the 50% calculated rate.

David Tillman, one of the largest developers and president of the Marion County Builders Association, told the commission that he supported raising impact fees but not as high as the consultants recommended, due to concerns about the affordability of housing and an additional $5,000 pricing buyers out of the market.

Tillman also claimed that the building industry funded campaigns to help pass the 20-year sales tax because county administration estimated, based on a 2023 study, that the impact fees would increase by around $300.

“Our industry gave money to advertising to help try to get it passed,” he said. “It got passed and now we are looking at thousands of dollars in increases in impact fees. That’s not fair to us.”

Pursuant to state statutes, the commission had to do a new study using localized data within a year of assessing impact fees, which showed a greater need than was anticipated raising impact fees, even after offsetting the impact fees with revenue generated from the higher sales tax.

“I’m not saying there shouldn’t be an increase. There should have been an increase probably five years ago that we should have looked at,” Tillman said. “But at this point in time, we’re struggling with such a large increase.”

Tillman alluded to political forces in the state capital that may be in play.

“You said Tallahassee is volatile. Tallahassee is volatile because decisions like this get made, and then they write legislation to try to restrict it, to keep people from implementing such large increases that can be a detriment to a community,” Tillman added.

Some of the attorneys pointed to recent legislative intent to hold commissioners back from increasing them in the manner they were proposing. The attorney for On Top of the World stated that unless the commission agreed to fund at 50% the calculated rate, they would face opposition in court and be the first “test case” under the new legislation.

Jimmy Gooding, an attorney who represents many developers, warned the commission that they could “get in trouble” if they did not heed the warnings of developers to discount the rates recommended by the consultant.

Ocala City Manager Peter Lee expressed concerns that the impact fees would hurt the affordability of housing and stall development that the city wants to fill in the urban boundary.

Lee encouraged the commissioners to implement the fees at 50% and raise them over time. Technically, the city needs to be a partner in collecting these fees when  for development within the city boundaries and Lee hinted that if the city and county can’t agree on an interlocal agreement that it may become difficult.

Bernie Little, founder of Horse Farms Forever, told the Gazette, “Growth can be good for a community if it is well-planned and fairly and concurrently pays for its impact on schools, public infrastructure and community services through sales taxes, impact fees and property taxes. That has not been the case in Marion County for the past decade.  Our county commissioners, by a super majority vote, made the right decision when they used factual data to adjust impact fees to more fairly reflect costs of growth.”

Brigitte Smith, chairperson for the Republican Executive Committee, supported the commission’s decision. “It feels like this was a win for the people,” she said.

In a social media post following the hearing, Commission Chair Kathy Bryant responded to a constituent praising the boards actions, “I know it was a long arduous process and we appreciate all  the citizen participation as we went through it. As all who were in attendance learned, per state statute, there are many conditions we have to meet and follow when it comes to impact fees. Setting our community up for long term success is paramount and I believe the steps taken today do just that.”

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The calculated fees are located on page 68 of the public agenda meeting attachments: View.ashx