Impact fees to see steep increase Friday

Today is the last day builders can get a permit for a new home without paying a steep increase in impact fees.

Starting Friday, school impact fees in Collier County are going up more than 200 percent.

The Collier County Commission in May approved the impact fee increase over the objections of Collier County School Board members and Superintendent Ray Baker. The vote was 4-1 with Commissioner Tom Henning casting the dissenting vote.

The schedule includes a sliding scale of $8,228 to $10,017 for single-family homes, $2,862 for multifamily dwellings and $5,724 for a mobile home.

The scale would increase drastically the impact fees for the district, which have not been increased since 1992 when the country raised the fees to $1,778 for new single-family homes, $827 for multifamily homes and $1,234 for mobile homes.

School impact fees are one-time assessments imposed on new residential construction. They raise money to pay a portion of the cost of providing services to new development.

Impact fees are assessed for each new home or business built in the county and paid by developers, who typically pass them on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Collier has 10 impact fees.