Lake City could soon change how new development pays for transportation, replacing its current concurrency system with mobility fees that would help fund roads, intersections, sidewalks, trails and other projects through 2050.
The City Council advanced the proposed ordinance to a second hearing during Thursday's meeting, a change that could make the cost of new development vary depending on what is being built.
“The mobility fee is a new fee that is set to address the burden of new development on the current infrastructure system,” said Mayor Noah Walker.
The proposed mobility fee would replace the current system and would require new developments to contribute toward transportation improvements related to future growth. The amount of the fee would vary depending on the size of the development, meaning a new home would likely end up paying a lower fee than that paid by a new office building.
The revenue from these new developments would be used in projects identified in Lake City’s 2050 mobility plan. This plan includes hundreds of millions of dollars in potential transportation improvements. The majority of the revenue is slated to go toward streets and sidewalks; however, trails and neighborhood greenways are also part of the project list.
“It will be used to address roads and infrastructure, in general, in town, but it will also be for new projects like bike lanes and trails,” said Walker. “We will also address some of our current infrastructure issues, but, overall, it will be a blanket that covers everything.”
The proposed fees vary widely depending on what is being built. A 1,500-square-foot affordable home, for example, would have a proposed 2027 fee of $660, while a 10,000-square-foot convenience retail development would face a proposed fee of $66,300.
The consultant company brought onto this project by Lake City, NUE Urban Concepts, calculated the fees for each development based on square footage, NUE project manager and principal planner Lauren Rushing said.
“All of the rates are based on a particular unit of measure, and the unit of measure is land use and so a lot of our units are measured by square footage,” said Rushing. “The goal is for the rate to reflect the transportation demand and essentially how many trips are being attracted to that business or home.”
The proposed fees are tied to a much larger transportation plan that looks at how the city can accommodate growth through 2050. The plan includes roads, intersections, bicycle improvements and transit.
“When we spoke to the city, some of the overarching goals were that they want to see a complete and connected multimodal transportation system,” Rushing said. “So there's an emphasis on alternate modes of transportation and how we help people get around by bike and create more walkability within the city.”
The plan would also determine how the money collected from new development could be used. Rather than serving as unrestricted revenue for the city, mobility-fee revenue would be tied to transportation improvements identified in the 2050 Mobility Plan.
The plan includes more than $500 million in planning-level transportation projects, but the mobility-fee system is not expected to fund all of those projects on its own. Funding would depend in part on how much new development occurs and the amount of fees collected from that development.
City Council departments will bring projects to the council to use within the budget. Once the fee is collected, those projects brought forward will be laid out and proceed from there.
“It will be project-to-project specific,” said Walker.