Cape Coral plans ‘mobility fee’ on new construction
Cape Coral is looking at replacing its road impact fee with a more comprehensive — and potentially higher — levy.
Cape Coral City Council agreed Wednesday to bring its mobility fees discussion back next week, as they could not reach a consensus on the maximum fee cap presented.
City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn said they already had a mobility plan prepared and were working towards having it concluded at the end of January-February.
“For us, the unforeseen circumstance is that the legislature changed the dates on us,” he said. “This was a study that was funded and moving forward last year with the schedule to take us through February. Unfortunately, we don’t have that. It is important to know what the legislature did. It is the reason why you feel rushed.”
Ilczyszyn said the legislature did its part – wanting to make the fees predictable, into the future, and calculable.
“What the legislature says – you can only adjust these fees every four years and when you do, they can only go up by 50% — the maximum fee at that time is 50% of what your fee is today,” he said. “What they did this session is add a new section – if you want to change that it has to be unanimous.”
Ilczyszyn said Council will be dropping the anchor for the future of the city and they have to do it by Oct. 1.
“Whatever fee you pick will determine what we can fund into the future. This decision is this Council’s decision to set the future of what our transportation network looks like,” he said. “If you are going to use the growth pays for growth mantra – what staff shows you is the full boat. What the city looks like in 20 years.”
Ilczyszyn said if growth does not pay for growth, then growth is funded from somewhere else.
He also touched upon commercial growth in the city while highlighting that half of the city does not have utilities – north of Pine Island Road does not have water and sewer.
“It’s the biggest hurdle for economic development. The growth is going to explode when we bring utilities to north Cape. The offsite utility cost is determent,” Ilczyszyn said.
Nue Urban Concepts Founder and Principal Jonathan Paul began the discussion by sharing information about Senate Bill 1080, which was adopted this year. He said a finding of extraordinary circumstances now requires a unanimous vote by the City Council after Oct. 1. Paul said a local governments cannot increase the impact fee rate beyond the phase-in limitations if the fee has not been increased in the past five years.
Mobility fee was the topic of discussion for the presentation, as it would replace the existing road impact fee, which has been the same for 19 years.
The current road impact fee for a single-family home is $3,347 at the time of construction.
A mobility fee is a one-time fee paid by new development, new growth, to mitigate the traffic impact from the new growth.
There are two benefit districts – where the money would be allocated – North Cape Benefit District and South Cape Benefit District.
The drafted mobility fee includes – commercial and retail, institutional, office, recreational, industrial, port and terminal, additive fees for commercial services and retail users and residential and lodging.
The drafted mobility fee for residential and lodging is broken down into per 1,000 square feet for the South Cape core, South Cape, central Cape, and north Cape. For a single-family residential per 1,000 square feet it ranges from $3,395 to $7,489.
For commercial and retail the fees, also per 1,000 square feet, is determined by three categories – local retail, multi-tenant retail and free-standing retail – with fees ranging from $4,952 to $40,367.
Council expressed some concerns.
“We don’t want to disincentivize commercial from coming here,” Councilmember Bill Steinke said. “Commercial has begun to grow here – certainly wouldn’t want to cut that off now. Just because we haven’t kept up with the rate for a commercial entity to come into the area, doesn’t mean we can’t make up for it now. That is competitiveness. They have been riding the gravy train for a while. If they missed it, they missed it.”
Councilmember Joe Kilraine said it is critical that the city not create sticker shock with developers, so they must be prudent in the way they pick the fees.
“There has to be real timing effectiveness focus. What is going to get us more radical improvement in traffic in the short term,” he said.
These fees are set at the maximum rate, which is a cap. Paul said the fees can down but not go higher.
“From this point forward, the fees can be lowered at any amount. They cannot be increased. They can be lowered up until you go to the last meeting. They can come down based on calculations or policy direction,” Paul said.
The council talked about setting the maximum amount with discounts up to the four years.
Council called for a special meeting Aug. 6, at 1 p.m. to further discuss the mobility fee, as the majority were not comfortable with the fees presented.
The mobility plan provides individual choice options for how people want to move about the community.
“This plan looks at how do you accommodate all modes of transportation within the city for the next 20 years,” Paul said,
The mobility plan consists of four separate components – roadways and intersections, multimodal plan, transit plan and potential for future water tax services.
As part of this discussion, the Council heard the expected growth over the next couple of decades.
Metro Forecasting Models Project Manager David Farmer said there have been 9,700 new homes in 18 months, which is absolutely astounding. He said the overall trend is up, even with the growth speeding up and slowing down.
“Since mid-2023 you have added 9,700 new homes, 27,000 homes since the 2020 Census. You have 40,000 vacant lots at least. The story is going to continue for the foreseeable future,” Farmer said.
The housing forecast shows that by 2030 there will be 118,576, which will grow to 147,337 by 2050. The population forecast goes from 239,362 in 2025 to 329,524 in 2050.
“This forecast, as aggressive as it is, is half of the permitting rate you are experiencing today. This is your minimum,” Farmer said.
He said with the general inflation from 2.5-3.5% and construction – materials and labor – inflation sitting at 7-8%, now is the time to plan for future transportation technologies.
“Focus on the commercial at certain nodes, neighborhood settings to provide services closer to where people live,” Farmer said of the Diplomat area.
He said building two neighborhood shopping centers on Diplomat could save 2 million miles a year.
To reach MEGHAN BRADBURY, please email news@breezenewspapers.com