Understanding the Problem

Tonight, at the behest of Commissioner Art Otero, the Kissimmee City Commission will discuss financing impact fees in order to help with developer's (campaign contributors) cash flow during these rough economic times. While we disagree with several of the issues that Commissioner Otero has brought forward because of the lack of scrutiny put into them, this post is not about attacking Commissioner Otero for bringing forward ideas for discussion. The WayneWho staff believes that by bringing forward these ideas, there is a slight chance the commission will stumble upon either something that makes sense, or they will figure out how ignorant their past decisions have been. For now though, we will discuss the "Impact Fee Bailout" plan that turns the City of Kissimmee into a banking entity, without pointing to a specific commissioner or staff member who might think its a good idea.

The WayneWho staff has always been against impact fees. Our belief has always been that impact fees were nothing more than a governmental ponzi scheme that was based on the premise that 'growth' would go on forever and never end. Quasi-Governmental Groups like "MyRegion.org" and "MetroPlan Orlando" which were created by development interest groups to give the illusion that growth was being managed, kept feeding our community the "growth was coming, and there is nothing you can do about it" rhetoric year after year and helped conjure up ways to accelerate growth to the point of what we all see right now, collapse. Now, there are no more impact fees rolling in and the money that was misspent on infrastructure is no where to be found leaving all of us without. The premise of "growth will pay for itself" or "growth will help us build our needed infrastructure" has been proven wrong, and all we can hope for now are breadcrumbs from the federal government in order to put in place the infrastructure that we should already have.

So now the City Commission wants to offer a bailout to developers in the form of low interest loans backed by taxpayer money. What they still have not seemed to figure out is that they can not build their way out of this problem. Growth is not dead because of impact fees, growth is dead because of governments allowing developers to over supply the market. It is a supply issue. The lack of credit has reduced the demand for an inventory that was already over supplied. So the City Commissions' answer is to build more? Demand cannot be artificially created. That is the problem that got us where we are now, so it does not make much sense to repeat the same mistakes. Supply must be brought under control.

The last point follows upon what we had discussed yesterday and that is the misusing of collected funds over time. The back-up for the workshop tonight states that impact fees tend to collect in a fund until such time that a project is needed. Basically we collect all the money and then we dream up some 'project' of what we are going to spend it on instead of having a plan that says we are collecting these funds to eventually build this project. In an effort to really stimulate the economy and pump some money back into it to drive some spending, how about give the money that is just sitting there back? $23,000 back to a homeowner is a lot of money that could help generate spending for goods and services in our local area. Since the government has no plans on what to do with 'our' money (not theirs', as Commissioner Otero believes) and trying to artificially create a development boom is a mistake, this seems like the best solution to get things running right.