INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Indian River Board of County Commissioners Tuesday voted unanimously to spend $340,000 upgrading courthouse security and to make the Indian River County Jail more secure and effective at rehabilitating inmates, but the Board split 3-2 on whether to pay for these improvements with impact fees.
These two votes in which the Commission voted against staff recommendation – with the controlling bloc of Commissioners Bob Solari, Wesley Davis and Tim Zorc setting a high bar on the use of impact fees, could signal a political shift that would make it much more difficult for County staff to spend these dollars before they expire.
Florida Statute, as clarified by case law and opinions of the Florida Attorney General, allows counties and cities to charge impact fees when new homes or commercial buildings are approved and built to pay for additional infrastructure capacity needed to accommodate growth. Impact fees are not supposed to be used to maintain or replace existing facilities or for recurring costs like staffing.
The first item up was $293,034 to be spent on a new security camera system for the courthouse, $74,870 of which was to be paid for with impact fees. County Budget Director Jason Brown said the County “over-built” the parking garage 20 years ago to handle future capacity, and the cameras, “Over the years as we’ve grown, there have been more security concerns at the parking garage with higher use.”
Loar explained that, because the parking garage and other areas on the perimeter of the courthouse are not currently monitored with security cameras, his deputies physically “sweep” those areas each morning and often uncover security issues, including homeless people camping out in the garage.
Solari was the first to object to the use of $74,870 in impact fees to install security cameras around the courthouse and in the parking garage.
“Personally I can’t see it, so I’m not going to . . .the explanation doesn’t go far enough for me to justify the use of impact fees for it. I’ve got no problem with the expense, or the adding of security cameras, it’s just that, for me, it falls on the other side of the line from adding capacity,” Solari said. “Your phrase was more security concerns – I understand that. But the fact that the existing community has more security concerns doesn’t address the need to add capacity if we’re going to use impact fees.”
Commissioner Joe Flescher, a former law enforcement officer and former Sheriff’s Office employee, said he disagreed with Solari and was in support of Loar’s recommendation.
“I think it’s well justified,” he said.
County Commission Chair Peter O’Bryan pointed to a recent uptick in violent crime locally as the reason for his support.
“You know, we’ve seen recently some acts of violence in the community, unfortunately, and I think that anytime we can expand any level of security, it’s beholden upon us to do it. I think this is an expansion of the existing security coverage so I don’t have a problem using impact fees.”
Davis echoed Solari’s concerns.
“I didn’t hear him say he’s against any security enhancements at all,” Davis said. “It’s just the funding mechanism of which he doesn’t quite make the connection, that in fact, adding security cameras to a parking garage and using impact fees to do so expands the capacity or the level of service to the garage and I kind-of agree with him.”
A motion made by Flescher and seconded by Commission Chair Peter O’Bryan failed 3-2 with Solari, Davis and Zorc in opposition.
Zorc was silent on the issue during the discussion, but has previously been vocal about the manner in which the county has spent impact fees, sometimes hastily before they sunset six years after collection. Zorc previously worked as a consultant helping property owners recover refunds of unused, sunsetted impact fees.
A subsequent motion to purchase the courthouse security equipment without the use of impact fees passed 5-0.
When the next proposed expenditure came up for jail improvements, that outcome was replicated – a failed 3-2 vote pitting Flescher and O’Bryan against Solari, Davis and Zorc, with a 5-0 vote to follow, forcing county staff to find the funding in another pot of money that did not involve impact fees.
County Administrator Joe Baird said he had the funds to cover the Sheriff’s $47,199 request out of optional sales tax revenues.
“We’re in the business of protecting, number one our employees who work there and secondly the inmates that live there,” Loar said, noting that the jail building is 28 years old and that it currently houses 481 inmates, a number that is up 50 people from the same time last year.
Loar said a jail expansion was built in 2006, but that the new wing was closed to save money, so all the inmates are housed in what he called “the old jail.”
Because the old jail is being used to house more inmates instead of using the new wing that was built, to save on staff and expenses, Loar said he felt the use of impact fees is justified.
“An expanded population is causing us to make these changes,” Baird said. “We could make more drastic changes in bricks and mortar, but we’re trying to do it in a more conservative manner to serve more people.”
A memo from Loar attached to estimates for the project states that $36,587 in impact fees is set to sunset, or expire, on Sept. 30 if those dollars are not spent. At that time, property owners who paid those fees could be in for a refund.
“I don’t know why we’re going to put those impact fees off to the side when it’s an obvious growth burden that this expansion is necessary,” Flescher said, advocating for the use of the impact fees.
The specific expenditures will be $8,325 for acoustic panels, $13,960 for security cameras, $8,090 for an intercom system into the “B” building for communicating directly with inmates, $4,299 for a new booking workstation for people arrested for driving under the influence (DUI), and finally $12,525 for expansion of the exterior lighting system on and around the jail buildings.
“Acoustic panels doesn’t increase capacity, despite the fact that it’s necessary,” Davis said. “Show me something here that makes it so you can move more inmates through.”
Loar said the acoustic panels would facilitate getting more inmates into 12-step program meetings and meetings with clergy members used as part of rehabilitation efforts at the jail.
Davis pointed out that just this year, Commissioners took the School District of Indian River County to task to justify how it planned to use impact fees, so the County should shine that same laser beam on its own spending practices.
Commissioners and members of the public had questioned whether or not the School Board could legally continue to assess impact fees with a declining student population as has been seen during the recession.
By law, since the Board of County Commissioners actually collects the School Board’s impact fees, the fiduciary responsibility of making sure the fees are spent legally and as intended is seen as falling on commissioners.
“It’s capacity that we need to spend impact fees on,” Solari said. “I applaud you for doing all these things . . . but, as I understand, the law or the ordinance we’re under is that it has to be for the expansion of capacity and that’s what I’m not seeing.”
Even after the votes, Baird said that the County had intended to install the courthouse security cameras during a major planned expansion of the courthouse – which would count as added capacity – but security concerns prompted the timeline to be moved up.
“The Sheriff and the judges felt that we needed to do it sooner,” Baird said.
County Budget Director Jason Brown said the County is looking at sites on which to expand the courthouse and there are also plans to add another courtroom at the existing courthouse building. The County would need to purchase land and to design and construct a building or buildings and would use impact fees for those projects.
