(To Be Heard Before P51) Second Workshop Dedicated to the Extraordinary Circumstances Necessitating the Need for the Fire Rescue Fire Combat and Rescue Service Impact Fee Increase to Exceed the Phase-In Limitations in Sections 163.31801(6)(b), (c), and (d), Florida Statutes
What the county recorded
Staff recommendation
Presentation Only
No disposition in the minutes
The approved minutes do not say what became of this item. That is a gap in the record, not a decision. It is the normal state for 24% of items. Most of those are regular business and board reports that the minutes do not dispose of in writing. This archive never infers an outcome from the fact that someone called a vote.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Apr 22, 2025
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The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, Apr 22, 2025
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
This case, across meetings
FR-25-1620 in full →FR-25-1620 was taken up 2 times between Apr 17, 2025 and Apr 22, 2025 — this is appearance 2.
- Apr 17, 2025PlanningPC9▶No disposition in the minutes
- Apr 22, 2025BoardR44▶No disposition in the minutesthis item
No appearance of this case has a final disposition in the minutes. It was continued, or the minutes do not dispose of it in writing — which is true for 24% of items.
What was said
Machine transcription of 26m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 48% of 136 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
All right, um we need to take up R forty four, correct? That's correct. Correct.
Good afternoon, Commissioner. Ryan Gwen, Pasco County Fire Chief. Uh R 44 FR251620 is a second workshop dedicated to the extraordinary circumstances necessitating the need for the fire rescue, fire combat, and fire rescue rescue service impact fee to exceed the phasing limitations of sections 163.318016BC and D of the Florida statutes. Substatutes limits impact fee increases to 50%
of current impact fee rate and requires impact fee increases up to this amount to be limited in in a two or four-year incrementation. uh phasing limitations, but it also allows for local government to exceed the phasing limitations if the local government demonstrates the extraordinary circumstances necessitating this need. um we can exceed that phase in limits. So because uh Well fire rescue is proposing a fire combat and rescue service impact fee increase that will exceed the phasing limitations. We um we have to do these workshops and
this is the second wand. So extraordinary circumstances include um unprecedented development in Pasco County, which obviously more people increases our call volume. Population growth since 2004 has increased in Pasco County 43.2% compared to 13.4% of the national average. Uh the current impact fee was adopted in two thousand and three and has remained unchanged since then. Since then, fire rescue has witnessed 150% increase in construction costs over recent years. The CCI
indexing increasing as well for 143% from 2002 to 2022. Uh land values have uh increased exponentially uh to approximately $65,000 an acre on property that we're seeking and usable. Um to an average of 160% increase since 2002. Uh and you know using NFPA 1710 as our guiding light, we're also behind fire stations. According to their calculations, four, according to our calculations, five, because NFPA doesn't take into effect the geographical layout of the county.
So uh because of these extra extraordinary circumstances, um Uh it's necessary to update update project costs and therefore the impact fee and ensure that uh we can deliver the new um services that are needed. And to show you we have a graph here um which just Uh shows the the growth in Pasco County, the dotted line as Pasco County uh as uh a representation to our surrounding areas as well as the national average. If I'm going too
fast, please stop me, but I know we're We're trying to hurry up. Um sorry about that. This next graph shows uh our call volume, which is the blue line on top, how it correlates directly to the increase in new impact uh or new home permits.
The next slide shows the C CI uh increase um especially around between the two thousand and two thousand twenty area out uh production or construction costs of climbed significantly. So our existing fire fees are right at about $420 a residential unit and about $548 for a non-residential unit. At that current rate. Next slide, please. Sorry, sorry, you gotta keep up with me, sorry. At that current rate, um we're projected to raise about ten million dollars worth of capital revenue
about um roughly about every four years. If you look up at the proposed fee area, we can shorten that up to about two and a half to three years and then also um to an even um quicker gap. uh if we remove the fifty thousand square foot commercial cap, which is denoted by the orange line. And then now I'd like to bring up um a representative from Stantec, our third party representative that we use to kind of collect this data and he can go over some of the methodology on how we came up with this.
P Thanks, Chief. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Uh I have a brief presentation summarizing the results of our impact fee study. Um,
I'm sorry. Peter Napley with Santec Consulting based in Tampa, Florida. Uh work with counties and cities across the state on impact fee studies and all Also these extraordinary circumstances workshops, I'm very familiar with and have conducted some in the local area recently.
What a
great picture. Okay.
Isn't that a good picture? Mm-hmm.
So um To start out, and I'm sure you are all very aware of what impact fees are, but we do like to give a brief overview of impact fees. are used for capital costs only to fund expansion-related capital costs. That's an important distinction there. So capital facilities that are necessitated by growth. Without impact fees. Impact fees are totally a policy decision. So you can choose to not have them, or have them, or choose to have them at a lower cost recovery level. Without
the use of impact fees, the necessary facilities may not be constructed to keep up with growth, or they may be funded from other sources such as taxpayer revenues.
A little background, the chief had already reviewed with you guys the current fee combined between fire and rescue service is $420 per dwelling unit. On the non-residential side, it is per thousand square feet, and currently there is a cap that exists in the county's ordinance that caps Non-residential development at 50,000 square feet. That's an unusual cap in my experience. I haven't seen that around the state before. So part of our suggestions and recommendations here
today is to remove that cap and assess all of the square footage of non-residential development with impact fees.
So the reason for the extraordinary circumstances workshop and I believe uh you have as a county gone through this recently, so I don't need to go into too much detail. Um and also the chief already highlighted the demonstrated need both from high population growth, uh construction cost increases. Another one is the duration of time since the last uh this impact fee has been updated. So it's been over 20 years since this impact fee has been looked at. That's often used as a justification for exceeding the
limitations.
Can I ask you a question on that top chart?
Yes.
Did you put Pasco County in white on a white paper?
Oh so what happened was you saw it better on Chief's graph, but it got reformatted because we went into Pasco County's like slide template and the colors changed and kind of looks odd, but I can go back to the Chiefs.
It was supposed to be orange and then it changed when they reformatted it by putting in a Pasco slide deck. Sorry about that. The methodology that we use, and this is another thing that kind of you can see that hybrid method at the bottom there is supposed to be a different color and easier to see. We use the hybrid methodology, which is a mixture of existing costs. So we take your fixed assets for the fire rescue department, and then we also include the capital improvements. So it's existing and future. Costs,
existing capacity in the county, and future capacity added with the capital improvements that are planned.
And this just, you know, details that out more. The Any assets that were funded by grant funds donated, they're excluded from the cost basis. Any dedicated funding sources that are used to fund assets, such as the SurTax or GEO bonds, those are also excluded from the cost basis. That's a kind of a credit that is standard process and impact fee calculations.
This one is coming up a little weird too. So the capacity is measured in what we call functional population. There's a requirement by the state that there is a uh a logical nexus that's used between residential and non-residential to create these fees. Um it can't just kind of be arbitrary. Chosen. So functional population measures the func the population impact both on the residential and the non-residential side. So residential is easy because that's you know the occupants of a residential household or multifamily unit.
On the non-residential side, it's visitors, a combination of visitors, employees, and that's used to create a uh a logic a proportional relationship between the fees. And this is the function of population we calculated in the county.
These are the fire capital improvement costs that we included in the calculation. So there are some fire stations included, and there is also a big training center and operations center out in the future that are included to a certain extent. We're including a percentage of it because a percentage of the cost is going Going to also serve existing residents. So we're only using the growth portion of that cost of the ops center and the training center, but we're using the complete cost for the other stations.
And the rescue portion of those capital projects as well. So this kind of summarizes the calculation at a high level. The total costs that are included for fire combat, $153 million, the total costs included for rescue, 99.5. That's divided amongst the existing capacity, the future capacity served by these assets to get the resulting fees. This is the fee schedule, the updated fee schedule for fire combat. The land and facilities
and equipment are separate in the fee schedule because those monies are held separately. So there's a fee for land of $36 per unit. Then there's the fee for facilities and equipment of $380 to total $416 per unit for fire combat for residential. That's an increase of 67%, so above and beyond the 50% threshold set by the state. And then on the non-residential side, the increase totals to twelve percent.
On the rescue side, the increase totals to about fifty percent for the residential and uh it's held flat for non-residential, which may seem a little odd. Um it's just the result of the formula that we follow. Uh we We're not too familiar with how the fees were calculated back in 2003, but a big part of it I think may have been that 50,000 square foot cap that was put on the fees back then, and that may be why the fee isn't increasing, but the county could experience increased revenues from
removing that cap on the rescue side. We're on both sides, fire and rescue.
So the total impact fees are shown here, and that formatting is a little weird, so it's hard to see the uh the total fee there. Six hundred and seventy-four dollars for residential combined between fire and uh rescue, and that's a total of a sixty percent increase over the existing fees. This is a chart of all of the impact fees in the county's impact fee schedule as compared to some other regional counties. Since this fee that both the fire and the
EMS are a smaller portion of the overall impact fee that the county charges, it doesn't substantially move you in placement in the survey. The larger fees that are really gonna motivate that are the school's impact fee, the transportation impact fee, part of the easy. Parks and Rec, et cetera. So you stay in the same place in in terms uh in in relation to your neighbors.
And then this is some operational data, but the chief already covered this in the beginning that they're seeing the increase in um i in in calls and incidents re regarding growth and new development in the county.
And with that, this is the second of the extraordinary workshops that are necessary for exceeding these limitations. Other than that, it requires two-thirds approval, and then notice is there's a statutory requirement of noticing 90 days before you start collecting the new fee levels if you so choose to go with the updated results. And that's the end of my presentation.
Okay, board members, do you have any quest questions? Commissioner Mariano?
Just a comment. Um you know I think it's sad that we didn't do this since two thousand three. Um Could have been a lot less stress on budgets go go going behind us. Uh one thing I'd like to see us do and and I'm supportive to do these I'm okay with even moving the cap, but I would like to see us if we've got something that's economic development related tourist evolution related that they have an opportunity to actually Ask us for a reimbursement through Some other source of need if if with possible.
Uh do you guys have any comments? I have one. Oh so I I would say um yeah this is way overdue. Um but I do have a little hesitation in an unlimited Um unlimited on the commercial and I asked the question and maybe someone can tell me 'cause I don't know how big. How big is that Target building? How big is that Amazon Distribution Center?
A million, a million.
A million square feet.
The targeted yes ma'am.
Yeah, so what would their fire impact fee be?
I'd have to do the calculations again, but roughly about eight hundred thousand dollars.
Yeah, so I'm I have a little concern of going you know, I I we I don't know why we had that cap. Maybe it was to get it through. I don't know. We had very little commercial then. Um So we definitely have to change that. But I wonder if we wanna you know, have something graduated when you get to Two different Two big sizes. I I don't know what the right number is, but I thought maybe someone else might bring it up here. How big the target's one million square feet? Yes, ma'am. I don't even that's just I don't that's a wine blow right
there. Um so you know maybe at five hundred thousand.
Huh?
The target building's not even in service. I know.
But um We did some slight comparisons just for um reference. So like a Walmart distribution center like the one represented in Zephyrhills. Um their current impact fee they paid were twenty six thousand. This proposal would bring 'em up to about twenty eight thousand. Um such as
it would only go up to twenty how many square feet is that?
Just over fifty thousand. And that's a Walmart distribution center.
The distribution center's only fifty
thousand? Super center, sorry, Walmart Super Center.
Oh, okay, not a distribution center. See, I just wonder if we should lower it when we get to a distribution center a little bit. Yes, Commissioner Mariano?
Maybe just make the maybe make the number 100,000.
Yeah, or two hundred and fifty thousand or something.
But what are the other counties doing what are the other counties doing
the other counties don't have caps. It's uh as the
So if they're doing it in
other countries. You
know,
kinda unprecedented unfortunate and and um for another example, a recent hospital that just opened up in the Wesley Chapel area, they paid twenty seven thousand dollars in impact fee. Without the commercial cap there's would have been a hundred and seventy nine thousand.
And and how many square feet was it, Dana?
I'd I'd have to do the math on that exactly. But is that maker? Yes, ma'am.
I just I think it's uh really sad that we didn't capture those better. But when you have a building that's, you know, five hundred thousand square feet, I I just wonder if we should just go ahead and cap it up five hundred thousand square feet or something. We'll we'll hardly catch an there won't be very many of 'em, but it seems that seems fair. Fairer. I Well
The only reason I'm gonna disagree is because other counties already do it. They're paying it in other counties. We're the fastest growing county right now. So I mean, why should we put any more s stress on our budget when we I I think we should do it?
And uh Polk County has no caps on because they have a lot of distribution centers. I think you have to do that. I'm asking the the consultant. Sorry.
I'm sorry, I can't say for certain whether or not they do. I uh Polk County is specifically. I work with Citrus and Hernando. They don't they don't have caps on on their non-residential square footage. And then I've worked for numerous other cities and counties, but uh I haven't worked with Bulk, so I can't say for certain.
And uh Fire Chief, are you aware of Polk County as a cap? Yes,
ma'am. We w we've the fire marshal's done the research on Polk County does not have a square footage cap.
Okay. And I'll ask the consultant, you you don't see a drop in service level for the for the capital things at the impact fee at a certain point. In Square footage.
No, that argument's never really been made because if you usually if you ask the fire rescue department, they say the larger the building, the scale of their response is proportionate to the size. So their impact on the county's service service system is proportional. So that that's why I think there's not typically a cap. I think Jack Mariano.
Commissioner Weightman.
So so back to I mean, you know, l at that at that Moffat groundbreaking today hearing Um Madam Chair s say the words that we're a bedroom community. As hard as we work to create jobs and jobs and jobs, and that's still
Um I just don't want to do anything that's gonna w discourage anything that's gonna create jobs, whether it be the big distribution that maybe they don't come right away, they're gonna go somewhere else because it's more affordable. uh whether it be any type of job creating thing coming in, I don't want Oli pushing the pushing that on them. If there's a way to reimburse them, I'd love to have that discussion now. to like if there's a way to use Penny for Pasco money or whatever to subsidize what they would pay. I'm okay with that.
There would not be a way to use Penny for Pasco money. There might be a way to use Well, there would be a way to use Penny for Pasco EDA money, I guess. The the economic portion, but
not the public safety portion.
Projects already.
David, come on up.
Who's trying to hold
back?
David Engel, Planning and Economic Development Director. What was the question, please? Um
We wanna know if we can um use some of your funds uh to help um put together an economic incentive package that might offset some of these costs for the fire increase in fire impact fee in the commercial and industrial.
Well generally and typically we We waive that for the EDC projects that are target industry related because that's consistent with the board's guidance and earmarking for funds out of the Penny for Pasco economic development. Um we haven't really considered using these funds for spec buildings or non-incentivized projects. So I don't have an answer for you, but we certainly will examine that and get back to the board if that's the direction of the S.
Well it sounds like you have the ability to do it. Um we want to be careful that we're not waiving all the fire fees. So that we're collecting some. Some.
So you can't waive fee. You can't waive an impact fee. You can reimburse it from another funding source. No, I understand, sir. But
we're with a commitment.
We've got to talk about that. But uh but Commissioner, it sounds like we do have some flexibility, so
Uh-huh.
I I would like to just alert to the board we d we don't want to dissipate all our funds if a big you know target industry project comes in or something else the board wants to get behind. Uh so Why don't I work with the with the the chief and the administration and come back with maybe a proposal?
Well I think I think we can get it done.
Yeah. I mean the structure exists. I think that's that's that's the point. And so the question before the board is is to cap or not to cap. Commissioner Mariano's concern really surrounds targeted industry or economic development incentives. And so if we have a targeted industry that's going to come in and build a larger facility, it is the discretion of the board to decide how to allocate funds. Whether it's mobility fees, utility fees, uh fire impact fee, depending on on that. This this calculation obviously would would drive it higher on a per square foot basis, but I I think you
have the mechanisms at your disposal to make it happen.
Um uh David Goldsey? Remember the mini warehouses are also occupying a lot of square footage. And I don't think you want to be subsidizing those. So I agree with you know, the county administrator should be a case by case analysis as to whether you wanna Provide incentives to these these users.
Okay. So Sounds like we have some flexibility.
Yeah, it'd be tough to get it. What what about using that two hundred and fifty thousand square foot number? By the cap.
I think it should be higher.
Well we'd have to go back and I would imagine the consultant would need to run some numbers or I don't know what went into your your planning number for your your dollars.
We could, yeah, we would have to run some numbers but um I think that's within the further if you want to make that Cap, we can make that cap, but To give you the specific data to give you the specific data related to that number, we'd have to go back and run some more numbers.
ten thousand square?
Fifty thousand
fifty thousand square. Did you calculate that into this document or no?
No, so none of uh part of part of the process, uh um Commissioner is uh calculating the county's existing capacity in terms of residential dwelling units but also non residential square footage that's covered by the service area, the fire department. And we didn't cap the square footage that it's included in the existing capacity. So we allowing for basically the total of all the buildings within the county. are covered by the fire rescue
service. So the capacity numbers would change if we said, you know, there is no additional impact. on service beyond two hundred and fifty thousand, then we would go through recalculate the capacity, I could tell you what would happen is it would probably drive up that dollar per square foot. And so You'd be calculating the same revenue but different fees because it would be capped at uh if that if that makes sense, because it would be capped at two fifty.
It doesn't make sense that you would go through this when we had a cap in place and not to factor that in when you brought it to us. So we'd have that to look at today rather than going back. Because I certainly don't want to slow this thing down. At the same time I don't want to kill what could be job creating things either.
I I have a question for Chief Gwen. So Um out of all of the the counties, how many did have a cap? Do you know that?
In the Tampa Bay area that we that we surveyed, none.
Okay. So eve di did you in the state of Florida?
I didn't do a statewide. Okay.
I think it's not To comp you know, to say if Hernando and Citrus didn't have a cap I I would be more interested if Hellsboro and Polk didn't have a cap. I I um So Uh I'd be okay with the cap, Commissioner Mariano, if it was higher than two fifty.
Yeah,
I wouldn't. Two fifty is too low. I wouldn't want to put a cap on it. Me neither. I think we can handle it as as the building and Properties coming forward. We can have it. by individual customers if that becomes an issue.
I agree.
Madam Chairman Mariano. Sorry. If if so m and that was the question I was trying to explore with the consultant. If if in fact The cap was arbitrary in your previous fee. Um or I would not recommend you I mean I think that's why the consultant didn't look at a gap. in reviewing your new fee moving forward. is if there is no appreciable difference
if the magnitude of scale of a building creates more fire demand, fire service demand, then they should be paying a higher fee. and that's the fee that you've got developed that makes it more legally defensible. If The board wishes to incentivize target industries that might have a big building. I think you do that in another way and fund And the the same way we do mobility fees and we take
money from the TIFF to pay down those businesses that you're looking to incentivize, I think you take the same approach with fire rescue.
Okay. David have a little hesitancy there. Did you want to say something?
No, I have nothing to add to what
I kind
of
do. Commissioner Weightman.
Go ahead, Chief. I
was
just gonna confirm I uh uh Fire Marshall did confirm that Hillsborough County does not have a commercial cabin.
Uh huh. So and they have those tall buildings.
Yes, ma'am. Yeah.
Okay. All right, well I'll Swing it without a cap. Yeah. So I'd take a motion. Wait, uh it's a public hearing?
No, this is your this is your workshop.
So if that was Oh this is the forty this is the R. Okay. Wait.
We did ask that you take public comment at this particular workshop just because that appears to be the statutory intent of this workshop is that you get public comment.
Okay. Uh does anyone want to speak to this item?
Is anyone online wishing to speak to this item? I do not believe so. Okay, and was there
I'm sorry there was there so you would you would close the public you would close the workshop and you'd move into item fifty one which is the ordinance adopting the fees.
Okay, so the workshop is now closed and we'll take up P fifty one.