Bizzaro Planning & Accounting – Hillsborough is letting developers decide what fees to charge themselves

By George Niemann

PoHo contributor and R-LAND, UCAN, FSP, & Amendment 4 activist

Views expressed are my own and may not be the same as the organizations to which I belong

If you owned a department store in Tampa and needed to make sure that your prices were enough to keep your business viable, would you ask your customers to price your products? Sound crazy? Well guess what? Hillsborough is letting developers decide on what prices developers should pay when they file growth applications with the Planning Commission. Welcome to Bizzaro Planning & Accounting 101.

How could this possibly happen? Well it all starts with the Planning Commission, which is appointed by the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners. Team Sprawl members on the BOCC invariably appoint developers to the Planning Commission. Well, in fact, they appoint developers to every appointed position. And why not? That’s who got them into office, isn’t it?

A Planning Commission workshop was held on Monday January 25, 2010 to come up with a new pricing plan. Oh, I forgot to mention that the rates haven’t changed since 1987. Yes, the county’s planning prices have been frozen in time for decades. When times were good everyone thought it didn’t matter because all that growth generated new tax revenue. Then we discovered all that growth generated budget deficits and we ended up realizing that we’ve been funding developer welfare all of the these years. It’s an entitlement that’s tough to fix, as you will see in this story. In any case, the Planning Commission is supposed to recommend fee pricing to the BOCC and they will make the final decision.

Planning Commission Executive Director Bob Hunter hired a planning consultant, Steve Tindale (Tindale-Oliver & Associates, Inc.) to do an analysis and come up with baseline data for recommending new rates.

Mr. Tindale began by advising the Planning Commission that the current fees for growth plan changes are $1,000 for 500 acre or less parcels, and $3,000 for over 500 acre parcels. These fees cover only a fraction of the county’s actual costs. The $1,000 fee (500 acre or less) covers only 12% of the cost and the $3,000 fee (over 500 acres) only 36%, respectively. The fees collected account for only 2% of the Planning Commission’s total budget. The other 98% of the budget is funded by the taxpayer.

Tindale suggested raising the fees to $3,000 for all growth plan changes (so the only fee being raised would be on the smaller parcels-500 acres or less). Keep in mind that your average property owner never tries to change the growth plan. Why should they. If the rule is 1 home per acre the average property owner will build 1 home. It is primarily developers that continually try to change the growth plan so that they can get more than what existing rules allow – usually increased density. So where it's 1 home per acre, the developer always wants to build 5, 10 or 20 homes. Amazingly, we taxpayers are paying for developers to change our growth plan so they can put more cookie-cutter houses across the street from us.

So with county revenues falling, they need to look at more ways to close budget gaps and fees are one of the prime culprits. But with developers holding key appointed positions, we now end up with developers deciding whether to raise prices on themselves, basically. Shouldn’t they recuse themselves from making a decision like this? Wouldn’t it create a conflict of interest for them? Well maybe in other counties, but not in Hillsborough. We never have a conflict. Our developers are multi-talented – they can build our homes, as well as, write and interpret our land-use rules all at the same time. The developers doubling as commissioners are people like Edward Giunta, Hung Mai, Frank Chillura, Derek Doughty.

As soon as the discussion begins, the developer/commissioners set us up for the kill – they say they don’t trust any of the data, and they infer that the consultant is unprofessional. To the citizens in the room, the consultant was credible. His data made sense. His credentials were impeccable. His recommendations were oh so conservative.

After a few more minutes, their agenda comes to the foreground as they claim that any increase whatsoever would over-burden the starving developer. They make no mention of how taxpayers are being overburdened paying high taxes for the services that developers are using, but not paying for.

Frank Chillura rhetorically asks why the fees should cover the costs for these services, in the first place. He says that the services we’re providing developers should be looked at in the same context as our education system – we may not have kids in school but we have to pay to educate the population…likewise, we’re not developers but we should pay for the services that developers want, like changing our growth plan to suit their business plans…WTF??? After listening to Chillura’s rhetoric, I thought we should call the paramedics to see if this guy didn’t take some bad acid.

Chairman Bruce Curry reminds them that the fees haven’t been raised in 23 years and that the taxpayer ends up paying for services that a profit-making entity is benefiting from. It’s evident that they don’t care if the prices were the same for the last 50 years. They don’t want their brethren developers to have to pay anything…let the taxpayer fund all of it. So they propose doing nothing until, perhaps, the next millennium.

After the developers filibustered for almost an hour, Chairman Curry calls for a straw vote (it was not an official vote because the vote was taken during a workshop and not a public hearing). Unfortunately, 2 commissioners were absent and the vote ended up at a stalemate, 4-4.

The Planning Commission will meet again for a final vote. Hopefully we will have perfect attendance that day and be able to override the strong developer coalition. Tired of developer welfare in these tough economic times? Let the Planning Commission know how you feel.

This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2010.