Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Multi-Facility Development Fee Study
   

Palm Beach Gardens is a rapidly-growing municipality of over 40,000 residents located in southeastern Florida. The City originally adopted fire and police impact fees in 1993. From 1996 to 2001, Duncan Associates updated the fire and police fees twice, prepared and then updated park impact fees, and developed road impact fees for the City. The first update to the fire and police fees was significantly affected by the recent approval by voters of a bond issue for new police headquarters. We recommended that police impact fees be used to repay the portion of the principal debt attributable to maintaining the

existing level of service. Since the remaining debt service was attributable to increasing level of service, no credit was deemed warranted for the general fund revenues that would be generated by new development to retire debt. A subsequent update of police, fire and park fees examined the feasibility of developing differential fees for urban and rural areas, since different levels of service (LOS) had been established for the two areas. While some measures of LOS differed among the two areas, since capital needs didn't significantly differ, it was recommended that the single, city-wide fee schedule and benefit district be retained. Road impact fees were developed by Duncan Associates to complement previously established Palm Beach County fees. An "improvements-based" methodology was used to create the fee structure to fund major improvements to the City's collectors.