INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The long-running impact fee dispute between activist/businessman Charlie Wilson and the county commission and staff flared up today when the commission approved a $613,000 contract with Borelli & Partners, Inc. for design and construction services for a new recreation center at South County Regional Park.
Wilson gave an impassioned presentation asking commissioners to table the action and repeated his longstanding assertion the rec center project is being rushed through in order to deplete a segment of the county parks and recreation impact fee fund that would come due for a refund at the end of the month if the money is not expended.
Impact fees are collected from people who build homes or businesses to fund new infrastructure necessitated by increased population. Court decisions have generally established money so collected must be refunded unless spent within six years in the area where it was collected for the purposes originally stated.
The money is accounted for on a quarterly basis and Wilson said Tuesday’s meeting was the county’s last chance to spend impact fee money before the end of the first quarter on March 31.
Expenditures approved today do not exhaust the entire park impact fee fund; only that part of it remaining from money collected in fiscal 2005-2006. But, according to Wilson, it exhausts that portion of the fund with mathematical precision.
“If they didn’t spend that money today, they would have to refund it,” Wilson said. “Now there is nothing left to refund.”
County Administrator Joe Baird, Budget Director Jason Brown and several commissioners said Wilson was mistaken, insisting the long-proposed project is needed and this is simply the appropriate time to proceed.
Wilson did not dispute the county has long had plans for the facility but asked why it had suddenly become a high priority.
“Your own staff said it was not a priority in 2008 and the population in South County has only increased by 4 percent since then,” Wilson said. “So why have you doubled the size of the building?”
Wilson has created two businesses to profit from helping people get impact fee refunds and Commissioner Wheeler asked him what his motivation was in objecting to spending the impact fee money on the rec center.
Wilson said he had no clients who were due refunds from this particular impact fee money but that he objects to what he sees as county maneuvers to keep people from getting legitimate refunds.
He asked Brown if refunds would in fact be due at the end of the month if the money was not encumbered today. He also asked how much would be due with the apparent intention of showing the refund amount would closely match the Borelli contract amount.
Brown said there would likely be impact fee refunds due at the end of the month if the $613,000 was not allotted but wouldn’t specify the amount.
He said there were ongoing expenditures from the park impact fee fund that would change the amount during the next 11 days and that he did not want to guess at what the amount would be on March 31.
“My accounting has been questioned on several occasion and I don’t want to give an exact amount that can be used against me later,” Brown said.
In earlier meeting and press reports Wilson has been critical of the county’s impact fee fund accounting, claiming staff have rigged the system in the county’s favor at the expense of citizens. Brown and Baird have said that is not true and County Attorney Alan Polackwich has said staff accounting procedures are legal.
Located within South County Regional Park at the intersection of Oslo Rd and 20th Ave., the $5.5-million project Borelli & Partners will design includes a 40,000-square-foot building, four multipurpose athletic fields for youth football, soccer and lacrosse, a parking lot, entry drive and other features.
Approximately $2.15 million in disputed impact fee fund money will be used for the complex. The remaining $3.34 million will come from Indian River County’s Optional Sales Tax Fund.
Wilson and county commissioners and staff also went back and forth about the rationale for spending sales tax money on the project, with Wilson citing staff statements about more pressing needs in other places and staff accusing Wilson of being against anything the staff supports.
A month-long effort by Wilson in 2011 and 2012 was instrumental earlier this year in moving the Board to refund $1.2 million from another impact fee fund that staff insisted should not be refunded.
