ST. PETE BEACH — City commissioners have given initial approval to the first major overhaul of the city’s planning and zoning fees in a decade, but asked staff to scale back increases some fear could drive away small businesses.
The commission voted unanimously Oct. 13 to pass the ordinance on first reading. It would sharply raise fees for variances and conditional use permits and add new charges for zoning review of commercial building permits. Commissioners directed planning and legal staff to come back before second reading with a tiered system that would base hardship variance and conditional use fees on a project’s size, scope or intensity.
Senior planner Brandon Berry told commissioners the ordinance is the first significant change to the fees since 2016, and that current fees don’t cover the cost of reviewing applications, particularly for large development projects.
The goal, he said, is “to bring fees in line with the direct and indirect costs” of administering the city’s Land Development Code and Comprehensive Plan. Those costs include staffing the Technical Review Committee, Planning Board and City Commission hearings, processing applications and preparing staff reports.
“This ordinance shifts development and commercial permit reviews to a cost-recovery model, to reduce reliance on general fund revenue to cover zoning and development application review costs,” Berry said.
Some fees, such as the one for practical difficulty variances, have fallen out of step with what reviews actually cost, he said. Others, including conditional use permits for major lodging projects or requests to draw from the city’s density pool, “substantially underestimate the actual review costs” and may never have fully covered the city’s expense for elective development requests.
Under the proposal, the fee for a typical conditional use permit would triple, from $500 to $1,500. A major conditional use permit, for large lodging projects or density pool requests, would jump from $500-1,000 to $3,500, plus $900 for a Planning Board hearing.
The fee for a hardship variance would also rise from $500 to $1,500. Staff proposed a $750 base fee for practical difficulty variances, which only single-family homes can seek. That’s $250 more than the current $500 fee but $750 less than the standard variance fee. A new $100 pre-application meeting fee for variances would be credited toward the application cost when the request is filed.
Site plan review fees would also climb. Outside the Community Redevelopment District, the fee would rise $900 to $1,900, plus 2 cents per square foot. Inside the district, it would rise $1,100 to $2,300, plus 25 cents per square foot.
The ordinance also creates zoning review fees for commercial building permits, which Berry said are needed to check projects for compliance with the Land Development Code. The fees would cover new construction, additions, reconstruction and accessory structures; interior renovations that change a space’s use or increase parking demand; and demolitions. Separate fees would apply to zoning inspections, including those verifying completed work, work authorized by a variance and commercial additions and new construction.
The city’s fee schedule currently has no charge for planning and zoning review of building permits, Berry said, and state law bars collecting one through the city’s building permit program. Staff is still working with a consultant on residential review fees, which could come later in a separate ordinance.
The new fees would not be retroactive. Applications deemed complete before the ordinance takes effect, or submitted before then and later deemed complete, would be charged under the current schedule.
Commissioner Karen Marriott said the review was overdue.
“Clearly, it’s high time that we evaluate these fees and make sure that we are recouping our costs, where it makes sense,” she said.
But she questioned the jumps for hardship variances and typical conditional use permits.
“One of the criticisms we get in St. Pete Beach is that we’re not very small-business friendly and it’s a hard place to do business, and it’s a hard place for some to start a business,” Marriott said. “My fear is this will increase that and will continue to make this more difficult.”
She asked whether staff had a sense of whether the higher fees might keep someone from opening a business in the city.
“My concern is just being sensitive to some of those smallest, least impactful uses that we might be adversely affecting by making those fees higher than what it warrants,” she said.
Berry said conditional use and variance fees could be tiered by space, scope or intensity.
Commissioner Lisa Robinson noted that the conditional use permit is a one-time fee and said she would have expected it to be charged annually.
Commissioner Jon Maldonado sided with Marriott on conditional use permits.
“I think we need to tier that down to not impact small business,” he said. But the fee for major lodging and density pool requests, he said, “is pretty close to where it needs to be.”
Mayor Scott Tate agreed the hardship variance and conditional use fees should be tiered before the ordinance returns for second reading.