Sumter eyes fees for roads

The Daily Commercial - October 11, 2001
By BILL KOCH
Daily Commercial Correspondent


BUSHNELL

Growing families need to buy more beds and more chairs for children. Growing counties, such as Sumter, need to build new roads to accommodate increased traffic flow.

That's the analogy County Administrator Bernard Dew used to describe the county commission's consideration of adopting impact fees to fund construction of new roads.

Commissioners will meet next Wednesday with Tallahassee-based consultants Neighbors, Giblin & Nickerson to discuss adopting impact fees. The county doesn't have any at this time.

The commission hired the consultants last April for $97,500 to study the adoption of impact fees in the county.

"It's to put a mechanism in place to generate the revenue to build roads," said Dew, who offered few details on fee amounts, proposed roads, when or whether fees would be adopted.

"More people means more roads," Dew said. "The bottom line is, we're addressing infrastructure needs."

Lake County residents pay road impact fees in five regions. The money from fees can only be used to build new roads in the regions in which they are generated. Impact fees cannot be used to repair roads. Gas tax money is used for road repairs. Sumter has a 6 cent gas tax for repairs.

In the next 20 years, Sumter is expected to gain about 40,000 residents, most of them in The Villages.

County officials predict more than 60,000 of the county's projected 90,000 residents in 2020 will live in the retirement community.

Dew said the county must start planning for that growth now.