- November 19, 2024
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The city of Ormond Beach is moving to update its impact fees, and the first change will take effect by May 2, with an impact fee credit revision.
Developers currently lose impact fee credits at a rate of 10% annually, and the revision would halt that annual degradation and allow developers to retain their credits. The City Commission directed staff on Tuesday, Feb. 21, to pursue the credit revision now rather than in the fall, when an ordinance that would increase most impact fees is scheduled to come before commissioners for approval.
“There are projects, such as the hotel on South Atlantic [Avenue], that would benefit from that,” Planning Director Steven Spraker said. “So it would allow some projects to probably start a little earlier.”
At the meeting, commissioners were given a summary of a Raftelis Financial Consultants study that had been presented to the City Commission in September 2022, before most of the current commissioners were elected.
The study examined the city’s impact fees for water, wastewater, parks and recreation, stormwater and local roads, and recommended that the city discontinue stormwater impact fees while significantly increasing the rest.
As a result, road impact fees for single-family residential units could increase by over 400% — from $162.61 to $864.59 per unit.
The last time the city updated its municipal services impact fees was in 1996, though rates were indexed annually.
Back in September, some commissioners expressed concern over drastic increases for fast-food restaurants and convenience stores, for which the study had proposed implementing road impact fees of over $25,000 per 1,000 square feet.
Developer Paul Holub, the only member of the public to speak during the meeting, said that under those proposed increases, a fast-food restaurant like a Culver’s would pay around $315,000 in impact fees between the city and the county.
Fast food restaurants had been differentiated from other restaurants for impact fee calculations based on predictions that fast food restaurants would generate a higher number of trips, but most local fast food restaurants, Holub said, wouldn’t actually generate the number of trips that had been used to calculate the increased road impact fee.
“The only quick-service restaurant probably in Volusia County that actually meets the threshold for the number of trips is probably Chick-fil-A,” Holub said.
One option to mitigate the increase for fast food restaurants would be to eliminate their separate land use category and merge them into the general restaurant land use. Commissioners supported that option.
“The only exception, really, that we all know about is Chick-fil-A,” Commissioner Lori Tolland said. “Everybody else is pretty much more of a restaurant.”
And if that changes, she added, the commission won’t wait another 20 years to update its impact fees.
The commissioners made a similar decision regarding convenience stores, opting to eliminate their separate land use category and consider them under the general commercial land use category, which is based on square footage.
The commission also agreed to create a police and fire impact fee and to continue pursuing a parks and recreation impact fee of $2,500, to be implemented as a one-time increase; and a $85.67 mobility fee per person, per trip.
The next step in the update is a Planning Board discussion scheduled to take place on March 9.
The Ormond Beach City Commission approved a six-year extension of its contract with Waste Pro of Florida at a meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 21.
The contract extension includes an annual consumer price index increase of 8.54% and a rate adjustment of $3.55 per unit for unusual and unanticipated costs, according to a city memo. The proposed fee adjustment will be applied retroactively to Oct. 1, 2022. The increases are due to labor and fuel increases, the memo stated.
Consumer rates will not be increased at this time, but rate adjustments could be considered in the upcoming budget year.
“Waste Pro has been an extremely valuable partner to our city, and we’re pleased that we’re extending our agreement with them, contract with them, for another six years,” Mayor Bill Partington said. “That contract extension will ensure that Ormond Beach and residents and businesses will continue to receive reliable and high quality solid waste services well into the future at levels that our residents have come to expect.”
The city last renewed its Waste Pro contract in 2019.
The Volusia County Opioid Abatement Funding Advisory Board will hold its first meeting at 9 a.m. Friday, Feb. 24, in the Dennis McGee Room of the Daytona Beach International Airport.
According to a news release from the county, the newly formed board will elect officers, identify its goals and strategies and discuss timelines for making funding proposals available.
There will be presentations on opioid use, mental health needs and current gaps in service availability in the community.
The board is made up of representatives from the county government and 13 Volusia County municipalities that participated in opioid litigation.
Mayor Bill Partington represents Ormond Beach on the advisory board.
Visit volusia.org/opioidadvisory.
