85.8 F
Lake Wales
Thursday, February 13, 2025

City of Lake Wales Considering Updating Impact Fees Study

Date:

by James Coulter

 

To help finance the city’s future growth and development, the City of Lake Wales is considering updating its impact fee study with the assistance of a financial consulting firm.

At a work session on Wed. Jan. 29, 2025, Lake Wales city commissioners reviewed a proposal to enter into a piggyback agreement with Raftelis Financial Consultants Inc. for $110,000.

The agreement will be for services to update the city’s Municipal Impact and Utility Connection Fee Study. This study helps the city identify impact fees that help fund public services like police, fire, parks, and recreation.

“Impact and connection fees are charged by the City to cover the capital costs of services to new development,” wrote Autumn Cochella, Director of Growth Management, in the city agenda memo.

“The update will recalculate appropriate fees based on the City’s 5-year capital improvements plan for the parks, police, fire, recreation, and libraries impact fees as well as the water and wastewater connection fees,” she further elucidated.

The process for updating the study will take approximately 18 months. The final report is expected to be presented to the City Commission at a future workshop.

Deputy Mayor Gibson praised the importance of impact fees, claiming that they were necessary to help finance local infrastructure and thus promote economic growth and development that benefited the city in the long run.

“I am a big believer in economic incentives,” he said. “The amount of those impact fees is very important. Dovetailing [them] with our priorities [as a city] is also important.”

Alluding to the Lake Wales Connected Plan (which, according to the city’s website, is “a strategy for revitalization of Lake Wales’ historic downtown”), Gibson insisted that impact fees helped aid the city’s revitalization efforts, which not only preserves the city’s unique aesthetic, but also cut down on urban sprawl.

“[Impact fees] enable us to get more of what we want to make this place unique, distinctive, and carry the characteristic of quality as distinct from other places,” he continued. “It becomes a draw, a market advantage, and it also elevates property values that allow us to do more for our people.”

Ameé Bailey, Planning Consultant explained that the city would be able to determine how the impact fees rates would be implemented once the study has been completed and approved.

“The study is estimated to take 18 months,” she explained. “Once you approve them, it takes 90 days for them to become effective.”

Commissioner Carol Gillespie inquired about how competitive these impact fees would make Lake Wales in terms of other cities and municipalities.

“We have been told we are in competition with other cities, which are also charging impact fees,” she said. “So that would make us aware of what the other cities are charging so that we are not out of range so the good developers come here.”

Bailey, according to the city memo, replied that the study would allow commissioners “to make informed decisions about the appropriate fee structure” and would allow for “flexibility and consideration of the city’s unique priorities and goals.”

author avatar
Maria Iannucci

Share post:

Subscribe

Popular

More like this
Related

The Mahalak Family Businesses Drive Change in Our Community

The Family Business: While there are fewer of them...

In Loving Memory of Tammy Sue Singleton, 61, of Lake Wales

Tammy Sue Singleton, 61 Tammy Sue Singleton of Lake Wales...

Lake Wales Cemetery Being Prepared for Asphalt Paving

CITY OF LAKE WALES - The roadways in the...