No one ever said common sense had to be used in the operation of local governments, and impact fees are a poster child for this concept. Martin County's fees fit well into this convoluted mold.

We recently participated in a review of the current structure and application of impact fees. For those of you who may not be familiar with these fees, they provide gap financing for such categories of county service as emergency, corrections/law enforcement, libraries, parks, public buildings and transportation. Although there is no legislation that mandates these fees, there is a multitude of court decisions that govern them to some degree. We could choose not to charge these fees at all, or if we are charging them, we must carefully follow all of the various court decisions that have been rendered concerning them. If this sounds a little confusing, bear with us a while longer -- it becomes more so.

Impact fees are paid only once, by a new resident, and of course that cost is passed on once the property is resold. Therefore, it won't affect those of us in our present homes and businesses, but would affect us if we sold and moved into a new home or business building.

Martin County has 20 capital improvement projects under way, or going through engineering design, because of a big backlog that has accumulated over a number of years. The cost for these projects is astronomical, and anything that would help defray it is greatly appreciated by us all. But being fair about it seems only to apply to the fact that each new building or home must pay something.

The definition of a new building leaves a little to be desired also. At present, if you own a little one bedroom house, and decide to tear it down to build a three bedroom/two bath house, you would not have to pay any impact fees. This would occur even though you may increase the number of people who live in the larger home, who would use the roads, libraries, etc. in the county.

The formula for determining how much should be paid assigns a certain figure to a certain type of building and then tries to apply that figure against the number of hours at that building, the number of workers at that building, the number of days occupied each week, etc. and comes up with a 24-hour "functional resident" (that's you, me and all our neighbors) per unit. This is based on the square footage of the building, too. For example, a 2,301-square-foot house has 1.217 functional residents per unit during the daytime, and 1.623 functional residents during a 24-hour period.

Going further with the above formula, and considering the non-residential functional population, a bank w/drive-in window has a 3.14 daytime functional population, while a bank with no drive-in window has a 3.40 daytime functional population. This makes sense as everyone would have to go inside the latter. However, a retail store under 10,000 square feet is expected to have a 10.62 daytime functional population (or customers and personnel), while a retail store with 100,000 square feet and more is only expected to have 4.61 customers and personnel. There is no accounting for how far they travel to get there. There are quite a few of these examples that do not make sense, and that should be re-examined.

Consider the location of a retail store in Martin Downs, for example. There should be more consideration given to a trip to the grocery store from a home built in Cobblestone Country Club vs. a home built in Martin Downs. Also some small retail stores are within walking distance and, therefore, should not have to pay at a rate greater than a big-box retail store where customers come from across the region.

The upshot is that the staff is proposing an increase of 14.8 percent for a typical 2,000-square-foot home, raising the fee from $4,772 to $5,480. There are varying proposed increases to most commercial uses. The final recommendation is to get a new study. We need a new study. A study done with new eyes. Hopefully, eyes that can look at these numbers using some basic common sense.

These articles, which are prepared by Taxpayers Association members working together, appear on this page on alternate Saturdays. Your comments, ideas or questions are welcome. Call or fax 288-0474 or write to P.O. Box 741, Stuart 34995. E-mail admin@mctaxpayers.org or visit the Web site mctaxpayers.org.