The Santa Rosa County School Board isn't budging on its start date for the implementation of the educational facility impact fees, again putting it at opposition with the Board of County Commissioners who want to delay the fees' start date by three months due to the pandemic.
At its Thursday night meeting, the board unanimously opposed the idea of pushing back the beginning of the fee collection date, which is scheduled to start May 4. The Board of County Commissioners said at its March 26 meeting that it would ask the school board if it would be amenable to pushing the fee's start date back until at least August in order to encourage home-buying in the county during the economic downturn.
Possible delay: Santa Rosa County could consider delaying school impact fee collection due to coronavirus
The school board maintained, however, that home building was still occurring at a rapid rate in the county and new schools are still needed.
"As far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed on our end in terms of the need for these educational impact fees," said District 5 school board representative Wei Ueberschaer.
The county ultimately has control over if the impact fee is implemented on May 4 or if it will be pushed back three months. Per an agreement signed in January, the county will collect the impact fees and distribute them to the school board, who will use the money specifically to build new schools.
The county pushed back at the school board's initial request for impact fees last year, but changed its tune after the resounding defeat of the sales tax increase in October 2019. Ueberschaer pointed out the constant back-and-forth with the county commission as a reason for not extending the impact fee start date.
"I remember how long this process took, and any hesitation on our part, any type of postponement on our part, just exponentially drags out when we would actually receive funding to build the schools that we need now," she said.
Homebuilders say the pandemic is causing a slowdown in the construction industry, with social distancing guidelines slowing down the construction process and unemployment scaring away potential new homebuyers. An impact fee now, they say, will only add to the deterrents.
The impact fees are $5,000 for single-family houses, $4,000 for mobile homes and $2,750 for multi-family units, county-wide.
January 2020: Santa Rosa County passes education impact fees to fund building of new schools
District 3 representative Carol Boston said she wasn't seeing the slowdown in her neighborhood in Navarre.
"There's a new subdivision going up down the road from me and there is no halting," she said. "They cleared a nursery and they are building houses and they're still coming, so we're still going to need to educate the children that are here."
Board Chairman Buddy Hinote agreed.
"I've been on the road the last couple of days riding around in our community, and it's amazing how rapidly homes are going up," he said. "I don't see how they put them up that quickly, but they're building them so quickly and I don't see a slowdown."
The Board of County Commissioners will meet again on April 23 at 9 a.m.
Annie Blanks can be reached at ablanks@pnj.com or 850-435-8632.
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Santa Rosa School Board won't budge on impact fee start date during coronavirus pandemic - Pensacola News Journal
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