{"id":40019,"date":"2025-11-20T21:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T21:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/40019\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T21:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T21:58:07","slug":"apopka-city-council-votes-on-first-reading-to-raise-impact-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/40019\/","title":{"rendered":"Apopka City Council votes on first reading to raise impact fees\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Apopka City Council voted unanimously on a first reading to implement the following impact fee increases on single-family dwelling units: 49% for police, 56% for fire, and 28% for parks and recreation. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The City Council approved the first reading of the impact fees<\/a> Wednesday, with a second reading and adoption of the new fees scheduled for the Dec. 17\u00a0regular City Council meeting. \u00a0<\/p>\n

If the new impact fees are adopted, there is a 90-day waiting period after the effective date of Dec. 3 before the city starts to collect the new fees. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier Wednesday, the council held a second workshop on the municipal impact fee \u201cextraordinary circumstance\u201d \u2013\u00a0a legally required finding<\/a> in order to raise an impact fee more than 50%. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At the workshop, Sean Ocasio, senior manager at Raftelis Financial Consultants, presented the study. New development and redevelopment will pay the impact fees, helping to fund growth-related capital costs and debt, Ocasio said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new impact fees won\u2019t be assessed on current residents but on developers \u2013 who in turn may pass the cost to new residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s high population growth, averaging 2.8% annually since 2010, necessitates these increases, Ocasio said. The municipal website says<\/a> the city population was 41,543 per the 2010 census, and as of April, the current city population is 66,580.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJust for a little bit of sense of scale: the state average is approximately one and a half,\u201d Ocasio told the City Council. \u201cSo you\u2019re growing at a higher rate than the state itself on an average basis. You have continued population growth projected for your community, and that population growth is what\u2019s necessitating the expansion of your capital facilities, adding [Fire] Station 6 and adding other facilities and so on to the community.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0The study proposed the following per single-family dwelling unit: police increase from $747 to $1,116, fire increase from $708 to $1,104, and parks and recreation increase from $1,060 to $1,358. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The impact fee increase per multi-family dwelling unit is as follows: from $747\u00a0to $892 for police (19%), from $708 to $883 for fire (25%), and from $1,060 to $1,086 for parks and recreation (2.4%). \u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2016, Raftelis \u2013 at the time known as PRMG \u2013 also conducted the study that created the impact fees currently in place for city police and fire. Before that time, the city didn\u2019t charge these impact fees, although it did have parks and recreation fees. None of the impact fees have increased since 2016. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At the workshop, resident Albert McKimmie said that recent unprecedented housing growth makes past average growth figures misleading and that the current timing of impact fee collection may not address existing infrastructure needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still going to have to fund infrastructure that\u2019s currently not satisfactory for what we\u2019re doing, and that\u2019s if those impact fees already been being paid, you\u2019re not going to be able to take those from the public, and you\u2019re not going to be having the same growth over the next four or five years as we currently have,\u201d he said<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Teresa Sargeant has been with The Apopka Chief for over 10 years.<\/p>\n

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