‘Mobility fee’ proposal moves forward
Fee on new construction to pay for transportation needs garners Council consensus
Cape Coral’s plans to impose a fee on new construction to help pay for anticipated transportation needs moved forward Wednesday.
Cape Coral City Council agreed the city should use a linear growth methodology to set its mobility fee with the city to offer discounts from the proposed rates for up to four years.
The options were either to use linear growth — which computes growth at a constant rate over time — or exponential growth, which projects growth accelerating over time.
Council also supported tying the fee to dwelling unit rather than square footage, at its workshop.
Consensus votes at Council workshops give staff direction but are not binding.
A mobility fee is a one-time fee paid by new construction to mitigate the traffic impact of growth.
The city plan consists of four separate components – roadways and intersections, multimodal plan, transit plan and potential for future water tax services.
At one point of the meeting, Mayor John Gunter and council members Keith Long and Laurie Lehmann were in favor of the linear path.
City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn said said if Councilmember Rachel Kaduk, who was not present for the meeting, chose the linear path the board would be deadlocked, meaning there would be no consensus for staff to follow.
After Kaduk shared that she was for the linear path, which changed the minds of council members Dr. Derrick Donnell and Jennifer Nelson-Lastra.
With the council wanting to use the county’s residential fee of $9,996, Ilczyszyn said in every year since 2018, it has been $9,996.
“They offer a discount to get to their rate now. Our number for all four years is going to be the end number, which the industry calls the base rate,” he said. “We are going to offer discounts in each of those years to graduate our path towards the end number, but we will be adopting that number for all four years an on top of that discount. We have an end point, starting point, straight line of whatever that number is divided by four. The exponential has deeper discounts in the first two years.”
At the last meeting the council decided where the end point would be for the mobility fee.
“Now we have a policy decision of how fast to get there,” Ilczyszyn said. “We have done all the necessary work to properly implement a mobility fee.”
He said they have capacity improvements in the plan – a mobility, 20-year plan.
“We are not out of funds in road impact fees, but we are going to spend down the fund,” Ilczyszyn said, adding that the fund will be depleted.
The mobility fee will start accruing funds and be placed into a new fund with its own restrictions.
Ilczyszyn gave an example of the market average at the 50th percentile with the direction at the end of four years to be just above market average targeting 51st percentile.
“But today we are zero,” he said. “I know where the end point and starting point is. What I would do is a deep discount from that number in year one, small increases from this year – 1-3% over where we are at, next year 5-10% (of the new fee) then 60-70% and then 100. We are keeping the fees low for commercial to incentivize business owners to make decisions quickly.”
There were a few other examples given of the progression over four years. The first was for a single-family residential with an existing fee of $3,347 and an adopted fee of $9,997. The first year would have a 49.89% discount of the adopted fee of $9,997. A new home built in the second year of the phase-in would get a 33.26% discount, the third year a 16.63% discount and zero for the last year.
Another example was for a free-standing retail which would bring the existing fee of $5,709 to $12,912. The first year discount would be 45.78%, second year 33.51% and third year 18.46% discount.
“We are already setting our starting line behind the starting line for today’s cost,” Councilmember Keith Long said. “We are setting ourselves back seven years to start and building in another four years.”
To reach MEGHAN BRADBURY, please email news@breezenewspapers.com