TO: Honorable Mayor & Members of the North Port Commission
FROM: Peter D. Lear, CPA, CGMA, City Manager
TITLE: Mobility Fee Presentation - Sarasota County
Recommended Action
City Commission to receive Sarasota County presentation of their adopted Mobility Plan and Fee Program.
Background Information
The State of Florida through the Growth Management Act of 1985, required all local governments adopt Comprehensive Plans to guide future development. The Act mandated adequate public facilities must be provided “concurrent” with the impacts of new development. The introduction of concurrency focused on accommodating the impact of new development primarily by adding roadway capacity via new and wider roadways and had the unintended consequence of driving development away from urban areas where capacity was not available or cost prohibitive.
During Florida’s period of rapid growth local governments’ ability to provide the necessary infrastructure was severely strained, many communities across the State started to deny developments or require substantial transportation improvements to meet the concurrency requirements. This prompted the Florida Legislature to enact laws requiring local governments charge new development only a “proportionate fair share” of its roadway capacity improvements and their impact on “backlogged” and “constrained” roadways.
In 2011, the Legislature repealed the mandated concurrency and enacted further restrictions on local governments to implement concurrency and to calculate “proportionate share.” Finally, in 2013 the Legislature established Mobility Plans and Fees as a principle means for local governments to allow development, consistent with an adopted Comprehensive Plan, to equitably mitigate its transportation impact and fund multi-modal improvements. The intent of the Mobility Fee is to enact a streamlined, simplified mitigation mechanism process and allow greater flexibility in funding multi-modal transportation improvements. The adoption of a Mobility Fee provides the additional funding source for providing mobility through a multimodal transportation system such as bike lanes, sidewalks, neighborhood bridge connectors over stormwater canals, and transit improvements. Plus, the implementation would allow an applicant to simply look up the uses that are proposed and calculate the required mitigation.
The Sarasota County Mobility Plan and Fee Program was adopted September 08, 2015. Staff from Sarasota County are here to make a presentation about their Mobility Plan and Fee Program.
Strategic Plan
Goal: Maintained/Upgraded/Expanded City Infrastructure.
Financial Impact
None
Procurement
Attachments:
1. Sarasota County Mobility Plan and Fee Technical Report
Prepared by: Thomas A. Cookingham, AICP
Department Director: Scott Williams