Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Transportation Impact Fees topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Tampa council finds grounds to pursue multimodal impact fee update after first workshop
Summary
City staff told council the multimodal impact fee — last revised in 1989 — has lost purchasing power and that extraordinary circumstances may justify an increase. Council signaled consensus to pursue additional study and public hearings to update the fee schedule.
City planning and legal staff briefed Tampa City Council on Wednesday about a proposed update to the city’s multimodal impact fee, telling the council that the existing fee schedule — last set in 1989 — no longer reflects construction costs or development patterns and that extraordinary circumstances exist to consider a larger update.
Emma Gregory, assistant city attorney, reviewed the legal framework the city must follow under Florida law, citing section 163.31801, which requires an impact-fee study and imposes limits on how often fees may be raised and how increases may be phased in. “Impact fees…can't be raised more than once every four years,” Gregory said, and increases of more than 50% trigger additional requirements: a demonstrated-needs study, two public workshops on extraordinary circumstances and supermajority council approval (and more stringent vote thresholds in certain windows).
Catherine Tellez of the consulting firm Fair and Pierce summarized the staff analysis used to evaluate “extraordinary circumstances.” Her presentation said the current fees are low compared with surrounding jurisdictions, construction costs have outpaced overall inflation, population and job growth are increasing demand for multimodal travel, and other revenue sources (notably fuel-tax receipts) are becoming less reliable as vehicles become more fuel-efficient. Tellez told council that the purchasing power of the fee has fallen to roughly 18% of what it could buy in 1989, and that without updated fees congestion and multimodal capacity shortfalls will increase.
City staff noted that the impact fee applies only to new development or redevelopment that intensifies a site, that collected funds must be spent on capacity expansions (not to remedy existing deficiencies) and that the city maintains six separate impact-fee districts whose receipts must be used within the district. Brandon Campbell of the city’s Mobility Department told council the fee update would be a multistep process: additional workshops, an updated Nexus study to meet statutory requirements, and ordinance adoption across two readings with the fee taking effect 90 days after second reading.
Council members asked for specifics about what projects the fee would fund and how increases would be phased in so developers were not suddenly burdened. Staff said those details — including an updated fee schedule and examples of projects matched to fee districts — will be presented at later hearings. Council members also pressed for guarantees that fee revenue would be spent as promised rather than diverted; staff reiterated statutory limitations on impact-fee uses and described internal controls and reporting practices the city uses for fee accounts.
After public comment from advocates and some business property owners, council members indicated they believed extraordinary circumstances exist and directed staff to continue the process; no ordinance was adopted at the workshop. Staff said they will return with a proposed fee schedule and full statutory Nexus documentation for subsequent council hearings.
