Rumors of a sudden major increase in impact fees in Polk County were, like Mark Twain’s death, exaggerated.
Instead, this week we had business as usual, a slow walk in implementing 100 percent of the consultant-recommended fee increases until 2027.
Impact fees are one-time charges on new construction that are intended to recoup the costs of the demand new development creates on traffic, park capacity, public safety and other local services They are imposed so that the expense does not fall on the backs of taxpayers in general who did not create the new demand for services.
Impact fees have been used for this purpose in Florida since 1965, but it was not until 1990 that Polk County commissioners began to impose them.
And, since then the commissioners’ philosophy has been to charge as little as possible in response to lobbying pressure from local homebuilders, who argued. the fees harmed their business.
This practice finally caught up with the county two decades ago.
So in 2005 a carefully choreographed series of public meetings organized by the local business community under banner of Polk Vision concluded the county’s policies had resulted in a $581.7 infrastructure deficit, $300 million of which involved unfunded road projects.
The solution was to approve the largest single property-tax increase in anyone’s memory to reduce the deficit and to consider additional and higher impact fees to prevent the deficit from recurring.
However, old habits are hard to break. The year before commissioners had appointed an Impact Fee Advisory Committee, which was dominated by folks from the development community and regularly recommended reducing impact fees.
Commissioners continued to balk at charging the full amount of impact fees consultants said were justified based on studies that are always required to adopt new impact fees.
Then when the real estate bubble burst in 2008. Commissioners voted to halve impact fees and by 2010 had approved what turned into a five-year moratorium on imposing impact fees.
When impact fees resumed in 2015, commissioners continued to charge lower rates than the consultants recommended.
This has continued and more recently the Florida Legislature, which has been increasingly becoming involved in local government decision-making, passed a law limiting how often and how much local officials could impose impact fees.
However, the law also allows local officials to charge more if they vote with a super-majority to declare they were facing a funding emergency and produced the data to back it up.
They declared the emergency all right, but when it came to a vote Tuesday, they decided it wasn’t much of an emergency after all.
Members of the local development community pushed the go-slow approach, arguing that a sudden increase was a “potential for disaster.” And so it went.
They also argued the increases would affect local residents who are buying new homes but neglected to mention that many of these new homes are in once rural areas once occupied by citrus groves and ranches once served by narrow country roads that are now faced with overwhelming new traffic demand.
The only person who testified in support of the impact fee increase was Tom Palmer, chair of the Ancient Islands Group, arguing commissioners had a choice taking a bold step or conducting business as usual.
Commission Chairman Bill Braswell, who was on the losing end of the 4-1 vote and initiated the discussion about a major impact fee increase, argued the costs the county incurs from dealing with new development is increasing and Tuesday’s vote “just kicked the can down the road.”
Meanwhile that road and all the others become more congested courtesy of the Polk County ‘Commission.
.

If you think the roads are too crowded, the forests are disappearing too fast and the quality of life is suffering, you have a chance to give county planners some ideas for better alternatives at a series of meetings scheduled now through October.
The format of the meetings is a brief presentation on the history of planning and zoning in unincorporated Polk County–that’s the part outside the cities where most of county’s residents live–followed by an opportunity to write down your suggestions for improving how to go about decision-making to avoid aggravating the county’s growth problems.
These comments will be included in a plan update of the county’s growth plan as it looks ahead to 2050. The proposed changes will go before the County Commission next year.
However, a little bit of reality awareness will be helpful going into this exercise.
No one is going to stop issuing building permits and all of the existing regulations that were written in many cases to enable developers are not going away.
But the exercise could provide an opportunity to quiz the county planners and the consultants who are assisting them on just what are the options for improving growth management in unincorporated Polk County.
The schedule for the meetings, all of which will occur from 6 to 8 p.m. is:

SEPT. 24 Coleman-Bush Building, 1104 Martin Luther King Jr Ave., Lakeland.

OCT 3 – Tom Fellows Community Center, 207 North Boulevard W, Davenport.

OCT 15 -| James W. Sikes Elementary School, 2727 Shepherd Road, Lakeland.

OCT 22 – American Legion Post 95, 225 E Wall Street, Frostproof.

You can also participate online at
 https://www.inspire-engagement.com/polk-county-comp-plan :  

The cost of maintaining septic tanks in Polk County has suddenly become an issue. if you read or listen to this week’s news reports.
The fact of the matter is that this was not sudden. Instead it was the result of miscalculations by county officials and probably some folks in the septic tank business.
There are more than 100.000 septic tanks in Polk County. They need to be pumped out every few years to keep them functioning properly The waste used to be treated and disposed of in pastures and other sites in rural areas of the county.
As anyone who drives around the county much knows those rural areas are shrinking.
That means the waste needs to go somewhere else.
For a few years. some people thought the answer was BS Ranch & Farm on the outskirts of Lakeland.
County commissioners bent over backwards to approve the project even though there were early warning flags such as the fact that the business began operating without proper zoning approval or state environmental permits.
Neighbors quickly noticed odor problems and there were questions about just how environmentally proper the company was handing the waste.
But by that time the county had already issued a permit.
Years of litigation and environmental enforcement ended recently when the state ordered the business to shut down.
That has forced septic haulers to truck the waste to a facility in Hillsborough County, which means their customers have to pay a lot more for the service.
Polk officials are building a facility to deal with the waste, but it will not be open for two more years. Haulers said they proposed a plan for a private facility a few years ago, but were rebuffed by county officials.
Not that it matters now, but Polk County officials certainly have a lot to answer for in their hasty decision to approved BS Ranch & Farm in the first place. They bought the company’s PR tour without checking with someone besides the applicant on how this kind of waste facility should be operated, whether the treatment area should be indoors or outdoors and just what kinds of products do facilities like this really produce.
In the case of BS Ranch & Farm. the answer was tons and tons of material was coming in and very little was going out.
This issue comes up at an apt time.
Polk County officials are in the process of updating their growth plan, which is a guide to what kind of development regulations will be imposed.
This seems to be a good time to ask just what is being proposed that would prevent a recurrence of the BS Ranch & Farm fiasco.

This summer was the hottest on record in many parts of the area, according to the National. Weather Service.
Data show the hottest summer in Lakeland and Winter Haven at 84.8 and 85.1 degrees respectively. Bartow had the sixth warmest summer at 83.6 degrees.
Meanwhile, summer rainfall was pretty close to long-term averages, despite the rainfall from Tropical Storm Debby.
The storm’s rainfall swelled river flows, leading to flooding advisories on the upper Peace River, but since then the flow has dropped significantly and flow is about half of average flow for this time of year.
.