Santa Rosa County Headed for Financial Danger?

Pensacola News Journal 10/01/06

In my opinion, our county commissioners and our planning personnel have us on a course headed for financial danger. I base this opinion primarily on Santa Rosa County's proposed 10-year transportation plan and my estimate of the new schools required by the planned growth. The proposed 10-year transportation plan lists the road projects required for normal road maintenance and to accommodate the growth planned for the next ten years. The total planned road costs total a staggering $1.296 billion over the next ten years! In my judgement, over $600 million of the planned $1.296 billion for roads is directly related to the high growth rate in our county. Two examples of the growth related road costs are: a beltway from the Escambia County line to State Road 87N ($200.9 million), and Quintette Road widening with bridge ($116.9 million). The scary part of the $1.296 billion transportation Plan is that the county plans to fund these transportation costs with $143.4 million from franchise fees and impact fees. This revenue estimate is $1.153 billion short of the estimated $1.296 billion road funds required! If the county plans to borrow some or the entire shortfall in planned fund requirements, this scenario paints a bleak picture for the county's financial future.

The financial future of the county regarding future growth driven school construction costs is equally grim. Based on the impact fees the county plans to collect in the next ten years ($111.9 million), I estimate the number of new homes planned for the next ten years to be 40,000. Using 0.5 for the number of school age children per new home for the next ten years comes to 20,000 new students added to our school system. To accommodate these 20,000 new students will require about 22 new schools at $18.0 million per school, for a total funds requirement of about $396.0 million in the next ten years. Since the School Board has agreed to borrow $18.0 million to construct the new Avalon School (PNJ 3/24/06), one must assume that they also plan to borrow to build additional schools.

The total shortfall in funds required for roads and schools for the next ten years in our county comes to $1.549 billion. A quick wake-up call for our county commissioners is that the interest on $1.549 billion at 4% is $62.0 million per year. When one considers that the total property tax collected in our county in 2005 was about $56 million, it is obvious that something must be done about our county's rampant growth rate. Along with most of the residents in our county, I believe that growth should pay for itself, and not be funded as an additional tax burden on current residents. Accordingly, I suggest the following actions by our county commissioners and school board.

1. Place an indefinite moratorium on all future requests for rezoning agricultural land to residential land. Our planning personnel have worked with our commissioners to approve most large zoning change requests in the past, which in my opinion, is the primary cause for the uncontrolled growth we are currently experiencing. It is time for our county to plan how growth happens, rather than to allow the developers to plan our growth.

2. Revise the county's 10-year transportation plan to remove all road projects planned for future growth. It is obvious from past experience that providing more roads means more housing developments. Speaking for many of our county residents, we have seen enough uncontrolled growth in this county, and want our leaders to respect the will of the residents, rather than to bend over backwards to appease the developers.

3. Raise the current $2,000 impact fee for roads to $7,000 to cover infrastructure costs such as: roads, drainage, fire protection, police protection, emergency medical services, parks, and libraries.

4. The school board should institute a $6,000 impact fee for new schools. Since new schools are going to be required for the new students that growth will bring, the people benefiting from the growth should pay for the schools. A $6,000 school impact fee would raise about $240.0 million over the next ten years if growth continues as planned by our planning personnel and commissioners. Assuming that some state and federal aid could be approved, the school construction could be done on a cash basis and avoid borrowing.

5. The residents of the county should be allowed to vote their approval or disapproval concerning future growth. I believe the commissioners are out of touch with the majority of county residents. For example, even though the commissioners forced the penny sales tax into the primary hoping for a small turnout of voters, and spent about $50,000 of our money advertising for the penny sales tax, it still was defeated!

It all boils down to this simple fact, the growth in our county could be professionally managed to achieve an acceptable impact on current residents, or the growth could proceed as in the past few years and ruin our county forever!

Antonio Apap

Antonio Apap is a Professor of Finance and the PIO for the "Concerned Citizens for Better Government" Political Committee