Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on mobility fees:

POLITICS

Developers face bigger bills for road fixes

By Mike Salinero | Tribune Staff 
Published: October 31, 2015   |   Updated: November 1, 2015 at 11:34 AM

TAMPA — As Hillsborough County struggles with the question of whether to raise taxes for better highways and mass transit, people on the fence want assurances that developers will pay their fair share to improve roads.

Their concerns are real. County officials now acknowledge that for decades builders paid a fraction of what they should have to for traffic impacts on roads surrounding new development. The result is a county honeycombed with failed roads that are clogged with more traffic than they were designed to handle.

The issue is important in the context of Go Hillsborough, the county’s proposal to increase the sales tax to raise billions of dollars for transportation improvements. Getting voters to approve a tax increase of a half cent or 1 cent per dollar will be tough — especially if voters think developers are not paying their fair share.

On Thursday, county leaders will try to answer those concerns when they roll out their first detailed mobility fee proposal. Increasingly popular in Florida cities and counties, mobility fees will capture more of the true costs of increased traffic from new development, county officials say. At the same time, they are considered fair, even by the development community, because they apply one formula countywide.

“It’s always been envisioned that developer contributions need to be adjusted,” said Lucia Garsys, the county’s chief development and infrastructure administrator. “They needed to pay a fair and equitable share.”

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For years, county commissioners have refused to raise transportation impact fees, even as the housing boom in the last decade flooded ill-prepared roads with traffic.

Then in 2011, Florida lawmakers passed a sweeping rewrite of growth management laws that steeply reduced what developers had to pay for road improvements.

Called “proportionate share,” the new guidelines said developers who built near congested roads only had to pay for the traffic generated by their new developments. The cost of bringing the roads up to acceptable standards fell to taxpayers.

The degree to which the change hobbled the county’s ability to upgrade roads was revealed at the Oct. 21 county commission meeting.

Commissioners were holding a public hearing on Duke Realty’s planned 1.5 million-square-foot warehouse distribution complex on Big Bend Road in south Hillsborough. Under the original, 2007 development agreement, Duke had to pay to widen Big Bend Road from four to six lanes between U.S. 41 and Waterset Boulevard.

Widening the road would cost about $4 million in today’s dollars. But under proportionate share, the developer now has to pay just $34,000.

“Folks, I’m just telling you out there, the Legislature did a really bad thing when they took away our ability to get fees from developers to help our roads,” commission Chairwoman Sandy Murman said at the meeting.

In the same 2011 law, however, the Legislature gave cities and counties the option of adopting mobility fees. Hillsborough County planners liked the concept but resisted bringing it to commissioners while the economy was still recovering.

“There was a time, during the recession, when there was not an interest in raising mobility fees or any other fees,” Garsys said.

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Though some details remain to be worked out, the fees will be based on three measurements: the number of vehicle trips generated by a subdivision or commercial development, the average length of the trips, and the cost of new roads or road improvements needed to handle the additional traffic.

Mobility fees take into consideration not only the number of new trips, but their length and the cost of expanding surrounding roads or building new ones. That formula captures cost increases for construction and right-of-way acquisition that impact fees do not.

“I do think it’s an improvement over what we currently have,” said Pamela Jo Hatley, a real estate attorney who recently attended a county focus group on mobility fees.

“New development isn’t currently generating enough revenue to offset the impacts it creates,” Hatley said. “I think the mobility fee will be more accurate.”

So far, developers are on board with the new method of calculating their share of transportation improvements, said County Administrator Mike Merrill. The industry’s attitude doesn’t reflect a sudden burst of altruism, Merrill said, but “raw economics.”

“They can’t sell their product without a reliable transportation system,” Merrill said.

David Mechanik, a lawyer who regularly represents developers, said they accept the general concept of mobility fees. But developers also want assurance they will be credited for impact fees they paid or road work they performed on projects that were shelved during the recession.

“I think the development community has realized that the fees have not been looked at in a very long time, so there is an expectation that the fees will go up,” Mechanik said. “I think everybody just wants to make sure the fees are reasonable and there is a mechanism in place so they are fairly administered.”

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In a county with an estimated $8 billion backlog in transportation improvements, the mobility fees are not a silver bullet. Under recently released scenarios, county officials think the fees will bring in $20 million to $30 million a year. In comparison, a 1 cent-per-dollar sales tax increase would generate $224 million a year.

“I believe mobility fees will have to be one component of funding transportation,” said George Niemann, a community activist who attended a county focus group meeting last week. “It’s only one component and there will have to be other fees included to complete the package.”

Merrill agrees, saying a 1-cent-per-dollar sales tax increase plus mobility fees will enable the county to draw down millions of dollars in state and federal grants. The combination would boost new transportation funding to $300 million a year under the current scenarios, enough to preserve existing roads, build new ones and dramatically expand mass transit.

An added benefit, Merrill said, will be an energized economic climate.

“We’ll now have a road system and transit system good enough so that CEOs won’t say, ‘Your transportation system is not up to snuff. We’re not going to come here and create jobs,’” he said.