Ocala, Marion County volley impact fee ordinance back to school district for an adjustment

Negotiations among Marion County, the school district and Ocala over how reinstated school impact fees for new construction would be assessed hit another snag this week, this time over how to calculate costs for multifamily apartment housing.

The Technical Working Group (TWG) met Nov. 28 to discuss a request by Ocala for the school district to reconsider the proposed schedule for impact fees, one-time costs paid by developers and homebuilders to offset the financial impacts their projects impose on existing county services such as schools, roads and hospitals. This was the group’s first public meeting pursuant to last year’s new interlocal agreement between the respective local bodies of government.

The request by Ocala came after the school district provided the city and county with a draft copy of an ordinance during a joint workshop held on Aug. 16. In that initial ordinance drafted by the school district based on the recommendations of a consulting firm company and presented at the joint workshop, the rates and categories were:

Single-family detached/mobile home on a lot, per dwelling unit: $4,337

Multifamily (apartments), per dwelling unit: $4,114

Mobile home park, per dwelling unit: $2,866

Single-family attached/townhouse, per dwelling unit: $2,020

Multifamily (condominiums), per dwelling unit: $1,990

The school district’s initial fee schedule was at 40% of what the consultant firm Benesch recommended.

When Marion County suspended collecting school impact fees in 2011, the fees were at $3,967 for a single-family home.

Ocala representatives, however, said the multifamily apartment housing pricing structure needed to be tiered based on the number of bedrooms for each unit.

However, the consensus was that since there is no easy way to determine how many bedrooms each multifamily unit had across the county, the county, city, and school district officials agreed during the meeting that Benesch would reassess multifamily apartments based instead on square footage.

School Board member Nancy Thrower, who chairs the TWG, indicated that the consultants would charge the district approximately $6,000 for the analysis. She said she hoped to deliver the updated report to the county and municipalities by the end of January.

The county plans to schedule another joint workshop during the first quarter after it receives the updated study and a new draft of the school district’s proposed ordinance with only changes to its multifamily apartments.

Once the report is received and the draft ordinance finalized, it will be up to the county commissioners to approve. Representatives from the county indicated at the meeting they did not want to delay considering the school district’s ordinance and understood that the only modification to the prior draft ordinance considered would be an updated fee schedule as it relates to multifamily apartment units.

Although the county as the levying authority votes on the ordinance, for collection of impact fees to occur, municipalities must provide for it.

“The municipalities’ “vote” would be to provide for collection within the municipality if there are any defects to amend, or to refuse to do so and withdraw from the agreement with 60 days notice. Collection can only occur when the substantial majority of countywide population in municipalities would be subject to imposition and collection,” Jeremy Powers, attorney for the school district explained to the Gazette.

Powers says that if municipalities “ultimately choose not to participate” that it “would torpedo collection.”