Poll responders give county poor grade on traffic, growth

A newly released poll suggests voters are angry at Collier County government and want better results when it comes to managing traffic and growth.

According to the poll, which was conducted by Paul Fallon of Fallon Research, 68 percent of the people in Collier disapprove of the county commissioners’ management of growth and development.

About 71 percent of the people polled also said traffic congestion is a big problem in the county.

“Growth and traffic appear to be the two issues battling it out for supremacy within the county,” Fallon said. “Traffic is an emotional trigger point. People throughout the county are upset about it.”

The poll had 34 percent saying growth and housing were the issues about which they are most concerned, while 26 percent cited roads and traffic.

Collier Building Industry Association officials commissioned the poll. CBIA has commissioned the poll every other year since 1998.

CBIA, the state’s largest building association, wants elected officials to use the data to address community concerns.

Fallon said 409 registered voters in Collier County were surveyed by phone. The poll was conducted May 23-26 and has a 4.8 percent margin of error.

Approval numbers for Collier government dropped across the board, compared with the poll numbers in 2004.

What can be done to address the concerns voters expressed in the poll?

According to Fallon, candidates running for political office need to be careful to take advantage of voter unrest.

“Voters here don’t seem to support a lot of stringent government regulations,” Fallon said.

According to the survey, only 10 percent favor passing laws to stop any further growth. About 38 percent favor stricter regulations to slow growth while 35 percent want growth encouraged, but those also favor managing it more carefully through more government controls.

This means incumbent candidates shouldn’t rest on their laurels, and challengers need to have a specific plan for how they would better manage growth, Fallon said.

“It appears people are reaching a point where they want something done, and they’re willing to try new ideas,” Fallon said.

Collier County Manager Jim Mudd said road construction is the simple explanation for voter frustration.

“We have a lot of projects under construction right now,” Mudd said. “It will be interesting to see what the next poll says in 2008 when most of this construction is done.”

In 2004, Livingston Road had just been built and there weren’t a lot of active road construction projects. Now, part of Airport-Pulling Road, Immokalee Road, Goodlette-Frank Road and other roads in the county are being widened.

That’s frustrating for many people, Mudd said.

The poll also has 71 percent saying they support the county’s policy of assessing impact fees on new development. But 52 percent of the voters say the county’s impact fees are too high, and 72 percent say they would favor limiting the amount the county can collect in impact fees.

Impact fees are one-time assessments on new construction intended to make growth pay for itself.

They are assessed for each new home and business built in the county and paid by developers, who typically pass them on to consumers in the form of higher prices. The cost of impact fees in Collier is now about $30,000 per home.

The county now relies on impact fees to pay for most of its improvements to utilities, roads and other public services. CBIA officials have complained that the fees are too high.

CBIA President Al Zichella said the poll was gratifying because CBIA has argued that impact fees are bearing too much of the burden.

It is becoming impossible to build affordable housing in Collier County because impact fees make the cost of such homes unaffordable to the people who need the housing, Zichella said.

The poll also shows voters are beginning to worry about affordable housing, an issue that was not mentioned by people in previous polls.

The third issue that most concerns the public, after growth and traffic, is affordable housing. The issue was mentioned by 8 percent of the people polled.

Fallon said affordable housing likely will pop up in future polls.

“I expect the number of people concerned about affordable housing to go up by a lot in two years when we do this poll again,” Fallon said.

About 74 percent of the people polled said the cost of housing is too high in Collier County.

Other items of interest in the poll included:

-- The county commissioners getting a positive rating on their ethics. About 63 percent said the commissioners had maintained high ethical standards.

-- The majority of those polled, 52 percent, said they believed it is a good idea to charge a 1 percent transfer fee each time a piece of residential or commercial real estate is sold. This transfer tax, if enacted by the Legislature, would pay for repairing roads and schools and building new ones when needed.

-- About 63 percent believe it is a good idea to build a new bridge across the Gordon River that would relieve traffic congestion.