Fort Myers Beach Town Council is considering reducing the one-time fees that developers pay for their share of transportation infrastructure. The lower fees more accurately reflect the costs that developers share when building residential homes, hotels, restaurants, gas stations or other developments, planners said.
Town Council is set to vote on the changes to so-called impact or multimodal transportation fees at a public hearing at 9 a.m. Nov. 17.
Council members discussed the new fee schedule at the first public hearing Oct. 20. They reviewed a study by Axis Infrastructure and subconsultant DP Guthrie LLC that outlines the proposed changes and new fee schedule.
Council members and staff raised concerns about how the town will pay for future development, including ongoing rebuilding after Hurricane Ian in 2022, with lower fees.
“I am concerned with how we’re going to come up with our town share, but other than that it seems very reasonable,” Fort Myers Beach Finance Director Joe Onzick said about the proposed changes.
Council member Karen Woodson said: “Common sense would say if you’re going to have more building and you’re going to rebuild, those fees would go up.”
Planners said that the lower fees were calculated based on the town’s relatively flat expected population growth at peak visitation season. Peak population is expected to grow from 21,941 in 2025 to 26,698 in 2035, the Axis study shows. There isn’t as much space on the island for new residents when compared with fast-growing inland areas that are often raising fees instead of lowering them.
The current but outdated impact fee system is calculated using the number of motor vehicle trips a development is expected to incur. The new fees being considered are based on a multimodal transportation system that includes all ways people travel to their locations, whether by motor vehicle, bus, foot, bicycle or ferry. It is in effect what the state now calls a “mobility fee,” although Council would have to create a separate ordinance to officially make that switch.
Many urban Florida communities, such as Cape Coral, are transitioning to this method of calculating a development’s cost share. However the fees are calculated, the money is reserved to pay for projects that support transportation and growth-related infrastructure, including parks.
The new Fort Myers Beach plan also includes reducing or consolidating the total number of impact fee categories to simplify the process. And fees for single-family homes would be based on square footage instead of per dwelling unit to better reflect the impact of larger homes sometimes used as vacation rental properties.
For example, the total proposed new fee for a residential development with 999 square feet of living space or less would fall from $3,168 to $963. Fees would increase with each additional 1,000 square feet up to 4,000 or more square feet, falling from $4,390 to $2,117.
Fees for developing new hotel rooms would fall from $2,918 per room to $1,580 per room.
The fee for a retail restaurant would drop from $5,063 to $4,502.