Sarasota News Leader

10/12/12

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Sarasota News Leader October 12, 2012 "You'd better get moving," Reid told Davis. "We haven't accumulated any data at all" from the local construction organizations and trade groups? Barbetta asked. Work on that began early this year, Davis said. Most of that update was supposed to have been the responsibility of a single county en- gineer, he said, but that person had been out on extended leave. As a result, Davis said, he had been doing most of the work himself. Nonetheless, Davis conceded, "We could have started earlier. … Some of it's been inadequate planning." Repeating on Oct. 9 what he had told the com- mission on Sept. 18, Davis said the county's impact fee systems for its library, park, road, emergency medical services, fire and rescue, general government and justice facilities cat- egories all dated to 2007. A temporary, 50% reduction in the county's road impact fee, adopted in 2011, will end for permits accepted on or after Feb. 1, 2013, if the commission takes no action, Davis said. The data used for all the impact fee systems dates to 2005, he added. Page 25 "We knew this deadline was approaching," Barbetta said. "Now we're backed into a cor- ner, not able to get the data on time. Why, I don't know." Barbetta also told Davis, "We know we're not in compliance with the law" regarding use of current data. "For six years," Barbetta said, "we've been using the wrong data, so I think there's a real sense of urgency here. … Let's just get the right data within the next 30 days" and plug it into the current methodology. When Mason asked whether Davis would be able to involve industry representatives in the time frame he had indicated the commis- sion would have to follow to meet the Jan. 31 deadline, Davis said staff would try to do that. "It makes some sense," he said, "because they're the ones building roads, and [they're] not building a lot right now." Reid told him that Mason's request was rea- sonable. Robinson said she did not want to guess in- dustry representatives' views on the data when Davis brought it back to the board. Sarasota County Commissioners Carolyn Mason and Nora Patterson review material before a recent board discussion. Photo by Rachel Hackney

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