[birdiebill]

I just googled Sumter County Road Impact fee and was rather surprised at the list of categories of construction and their assigned impact fee. There was about 80 different categories from retail to restaurants to single detached homes to multi-story residential construction to gas stations to grocery stores to various types of medical clinics and hospitals to auto supply stores to industrial buildings to bars to golf courses to bowling lanes and on and on. Some impact fees were per housing unit, some were per 1000 square feet, some were per hole of the golf course, some per lane of the bowling alley, some per screen of the theater, etc. The current rates were set in Oct 2020 at 40% of the maximum allowed. If the rate can not be raised on just one category, but on all categories at the same time, the increased impact fee will negatively impact every category of future construction in the county. Raising the impact fee on retired community single family homes would raise the current impact fee of $972 per house to $2430 per house, but it would also raise the impact fee on every other category.

Also noted in reading the document that impact fee revenue can not be used for maintenance on existing county and state roads. That has to be paid by other sources of money from the county or the state. New county road construction and improvements to existing county roads necessitated by the development can be paid with impact fees. I surmise that raising the impact fee of just the developer, if that can be done without affecting the other categories, would not generate enough revenue to completely reverse the 2020 property tax increase and still cover the county's budget.