{"id":49921,"date":"2024-09-18T10:02:51","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T14:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=49921"},"modified":"2024-09-18T10:02:57","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T14:02:57","slug":"polk-county-commission-approves-much-higher-fees-for-new-construction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/09\/18\/polk-county-commission-approves-much-higher-fees-for-new-construction\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk County Commission approves much higher fees for new construction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A super majority was needed to go beyond state limits; nearly $20K in new fees could be passed on to buyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Buying a home in Polk County could soon get more expensive after commissioners approved a plan to nearly double fees on new construction. Some argue it&#8217;s necessary to accommodate one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. But others worry it will price out families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Beau Waters is a third-generation homebuilder in Winter Haven. While he gets that the impact fees for things like new schools and roads are important, the amount may be too much.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" data-dominant-color=\"e5dfdd\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"225\" height=\"225\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/fees.png?resize=225%2C225&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49922 not-transparent\" style=\"--dominant-color: #e5dfdd; width:383px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/fees.png?w=225&amp;ssl=1 225w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/fees.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat was being proposed was too drastic,\u201d he says. \u201cIt&#8217;s still a drastic increase, but we do know that costs are rising and we need to make sure that our infrastructure can keep up with what we&#8217;re building.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">County leaders agreed to phase in the increases over a couple of years to ease the blow to builders who pay them and then pass the cost on to homebuyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A study showed that the fees need to be doubled to accommodate the recent and future growth of the county, which would cost about $20,000 for a new single-family home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou will have a hard time convincing the majority of the population of this county that they have benefitted from the development that&#8217;s occurred in the last ten years,\u201d Commissioner Neil Combee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the growth has already slowed; Waters says far fewer permits have been pulled for new construction this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u201cIt is decreasing in numbers of permits pulled from Covid times,\u201d he says. \u201cI don&#8217;t think we&#8217;re overbuilt at this time. I think people are continuing to move here because it is affordable.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just likely a little less affordable than before. One silver lining is news the Federal Reserve may lower interest rates on Wednesday which could offset the higher home costs related to those fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The county still needs state approval \u2014 because the new fees are higher than state law allows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A super majority was needed to go beyond state limits; nearly $20K in new fees could be passed on to buyers. Buying a home in Polk County could soon get&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":49922,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/fees.png","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[9763],"class_list":["post-49921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-polk-county-commission-approves-much-higher-fees-for-new-construction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49923,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49921\/revisions\/49923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}