2011-01-14 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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that may be the inaudible before it’s completed. And it’s been completed for years, but not gotten MR. HOFFMANN: Well, what you’re saying of course is this is a tool that the county government can use to make sure the person pulling the building permit actually does the job in the time which he or she is supposed to do it. Oh wow, what a theory that would be, huh. And then maybe the county wouldn’t have to try to extend all these things so frequently as we do. MS. PROVALENKO: And we would be getting revenues in from the get-go. MR. HOFFMANN: Yes. It’s a possibility. But don’t forget the basis of my arguments or my discussion on the impact fees, I’m sorry Bill, bases collection of those fees on, if you will, as a suggestion, at building permit, not at subdivision code. So, by doing that, you’re basically forcing or trying to put a spur to the developer or the builder to not dawdle on his jobs and his efforts and to do that. And by the way, I’d forgotten, can I digress just a little bit as long as I brought one of my favorite subjects of impact fees. Again, if you’re looking for cost of government, I suggest to you that a lack of an effective fair share system. I’m not arguing whether it’s right or wrong or indifferent. My opinions on that matter are public knowledge. I’m just saying the effectiveness of the system we have is causing us to not obtain substantial revenues over a period of time that would address our infrastructure. And as you know, that’s translated into a much more of a burden on the individual taxpayers, and much more burden on our budget because then we have to increase debt service and repay them the bonds because that’s one of the only fee simple matter of financing any of our infrastructure projects regardless of whether they happen to appear on the Capital Improvements Project Budget or not. So the idea of having an effective fair share system, if you don’t want to say that’s an impact fee, call it whatever you want, but an effective impact fee system that allows collections and insures collections at the time of building permit is certainly a revenue stream we have not tapped adequately. Let me just leave it that. MS. PROVALENKO: Basically you said the same thing or you told me what I was asking, is that there’s a source of revenue out there we are not getting. And we should be getting. I mean, we should be getting it from the time you purchase the property till you put your foundation in, as the process goes on, if it takes a year to build, those real property taxes should be increasing based on that value. MR. HOFFMANN: As I understand it, although I don’t know that we’ve ever really examined it, I happened to examine that in much detail. I was more concentrated on the impact fee and a substantial change in that. Bill, here,with his experience in finance and everything of course,is well aware of what we can, I know we can do what you’re saying. I’d like to hear what the advantages and disadvantages of that are. MS. PROVALENKO: We talked about raising taxes or maybe if we collected everything that’s outstanding to us, we wouldn’t have to be thinking … MR. HOFFMANN: Don’t forget now. You’re absolutely correct, but I also look at it from another perspective which we proposed in council. Jacobson, Pilago and myself, three years ago, was to do a top to bottom assessment of properties in the county and to 20