A Santa Rosa County judge heard two days of arguments in the Home Builders Association of West Florida's lawsuit against the Santa Rosa County School Board regarding educational impact fees, and said she'll make a ruling on the motion for temporary injunction no later than June 29.
Santa Rosa County Circuit Judge Darlene Dickey heard from attorneys from both sides Wednesday and Thursday, but said at the close of the hearing Thursday that she would need more time to think about a ruling before issuing a final decision.
The ruling, which will come no later than June 29, will determine whether or not to grant a temporary injunction on the collection of impact fees. Granting the injunction would mean the county could no longer collect impact fees on behalf of the school board while the lawsuit plays out in court.
No funds collected so far: Santa Rosa County has collected $0 in impact fees since ordinance went into effect May 4
The judge's decision will be a significant one, despite being a preliminary injunction hearing because it's indicative of which way she might side at the conclusion of the case, according to school board attorney Paul Green.
"One of the major issues in a preliminary injunction is whether or not the court feels there is a significant chance that the relief being sought will be granted," Green told the school board members at their meeting on June 4. "If she (the judge) doesn’t think that, then that’s a likelihood that the preliminary injunction will not be granted. So, in essence, even though you call it simply a hearing on a preliminary injunction, it really goes to the merits of the case very deeply."
The county passed an impact fee ordinance at the behest of the school board in January for $5,000 for single-family houses, $4,000 for mobile homes and $2,750 for multi-family units. The county collects the impact fees and distributes them to the school board, which will use the fees to pay exclusively for new schools.
The Home Builders Association of West Florida and 11 other home building companies sued the school board and the county in April, saying the fees are unconstitutional.
Currently, the funds are being held in escrow while litigation is pending due to the lawsuit, meaning the county is keeping the fees in an account and not distributing them to the school board until the lawsuit is over.
Home builders argue fees will hurt economy, hurt their business
The HBA has been fighting the impact fee from the get-go, claiming that a $5,000 fee on top of a new home's existing cost will be prohibitive to first-time home buyers or low- or middle-income home buyers.
The organization, which represents home construction companies in Northwest Florida, filed a lawsuit in April naming the school board and the county. Eleven local homebuilding companies that operate in Santa Rosa County are listed as co-plaintiffs in the suit.
The HBA claimed in court filings that there are flaws in the ways the school district's impact fee consultant calculated the amount of fees and the number of students impacted by new construction; that the ordinance unlawfully delegates county authority to the school board; and that the impact fees are "invalid, unconstitutional and illegal."
Blaine Flynn, president of the HBA and owner of Flynn Built homes, testified Wednesday afternoon to the impact on buyers and businesses. He was called by the HBA's attorney as a witness and subsequently cross-examined by the attorney for the school board.
Lawsuit: Homebuilders sue Santa Rosa County and school board over educational impact fees
Flynn testified that he had many military and workforce housing buyers, and the impact fee would deter those buyers from purchasing homes in Santa Rosa County. He also said the impact fee would "absolutely" hurt his business and the local economy.
"My concern is that for every 1,000 homes built, it employs 2,900 full-time positions, whether that's a title clerk, a permanent clerk or whatever," Flynn testified. "And we just don't know what this is going to look like because, again, you keep going back to, is $5,000 significant? We have workforce families that actually don't even have $5,000 in savings. From our sample size dealing with lending and dealing with pre-approval letters, you'd be surprised with the number that don't have any savings."
Slow down or speeding up?: Santa Rosa County's homebuilding industry was booming before the pandemic. Now what?
Attorneys for the HBA also claimed that it wasn't fair for home buyers in Jay and other rural areas to have to help fund schools in the faster-growing areas like Pace and Navarre. The crux of the HBA’s argument was that impact fees wouldn’t benefit everyone, only households with minor children. An elderly couple buying a mobile home in Chumuckla, for example, would have to pay a $4,000 impact fee and wouldn’t benefit from a new school being built.
School board claims the funds are needed, benefits shared district-wide
The school board and its attorneys, however, have consistently claimed that impact fees are the only way the school district can keep up with the growing demands on the school system — and new schools are going to be required in the coming years if developers continue to build large housing subdivisions that will pump more children into the school system.
Joey Harrell, assistant superintendent for administration for Santa Rosa County schools, testified Thursday morning that the school district has exhausted all other ways of funding new school construction and has no other option than to put the nexus of funding on those who are building new homes.
“For the overwhelming majority of our facilities, there is no space available to continue to add to," Harrell said. "It is now paramount that we now start building new schools because we’ve maximized the amount that we can put on those campuses.”
List of overcrowded schools: Is your child's school over capacity? A list of Santa Rosa County's most overcrowded schools
Henry Fishkind, a municipal financial adviser in Florida, testified for the school board about how impact fees help accommodate for new growth.
"When there is an impact fee imposed upon that new growth to pay for a portion of the infrastructure by providing additional capital resources and funding to the school district, they can then expand the capacity of the system to thereby accommodate that increment of growth that was generated by that increment of new development," Fishkind said.
Judge Dickey will now have to decide whether or not the HBA attorneys' argument that the impact fee is an unconstitutional tax on citizens that doesn't benefit everyone is cause enough to grant the temporary injunction.
Both sides can expect a ruling on or before June 29, she said.
Annie Blanks can be reached at ablanks@pnj.com or 850-435-8632.
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