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Indian River County. In May of 2012,the Board of County Commissioners(BCC)considered a recommendation from the Economic Development Council(EDC)to suspend all impact fees for a period of two years. After discussion, the BCC voted not to suspend the County's impact fees as recommended by the EDC. Instead,the BCC directed staff to determine how the County could reduce non-residential impact fee rates. In response to the BCC's directive, staff researched the issue of reducing non-residential transportation impact fee rates, identified alternative ways to reduce those rates, and analyzed fee reduction alternatives. The result of that research was incorporated into the 2012 Impact Fee Review Report which was presented to the BCC in October of 2012. Subsequently,the BCC authorized staff to obtain the services of an impact fee consultant to review the current impact fee schedule,update fee formula costs and other inputs,and develop a new impact fee schedule that reduces fees on non- residential land uses while minimizing or avoiding fee increases on residential uses. According to the adopted Indian River County Impact Fee Ordinance, the county will, every three years,review and update its impact fees and change the fee schedules to reflect current economic and development conditions. Because the last impact fee review was performed in 2009,and because the BCC directed staff to revisit the current impact fee schedule,the county has developed the attached Scope of Services do develop an Impact Fee Update. ANALYSIS The attached Impact Fee Update Scope of Services contains tasks authorizing a consultant with expertise in the impact fee process to review the county's existing impact fee formulas and policies; review previously authorized impact fee studies;utilize the latest available data to update impact fee variables and inputs; update land acquisition and infrastructure costs; review existing levels of service (for non-traffic fee categories only); update impact fee credits; and develop an updated impact fee cost schedule. The proposed update involves reviewing each of the major components of the County's impact fee program and also identifying strategies to reduce non-residential impact fees while minimizing or avoiding increases to residential impact fees. The Scope contains specific activities and subtasks as part of the update. For example,the Scope requires that the consultants review traffic impact fee variables, such as trip rate and trip length by land use category,and to incorporate the most up-to-date information from the 2012 Trip Generation Rate Manual (9t' Edition) and other sources, such as locally developed trip rates, to supplement information in the Manual. Along with other tasks,the consultants will review levels-of-service for all non-traffic fee facility/categories, especially Fire/EMS, Corrections, and Parks, and will review the appropriateness of the levels of service. The Scope also involves reviewing cost information and obtaining revised cost data for all phases of facility and project construction. Since the price of land and the cost of construction projects have decreased recently, it is reasonable to expect that a new impact fee update will result in lower overall impact fee rates. In fact, that has been the experience of several local governments which recently completed impact fee update studies. FACommunity Development\Users\MPO\Meetings\BCC\'-)O13\]mpact Fees 021213 BCC.doe 2 103