TAVARES, Fla. — The population has been growing significantly in one Lake County community.
To keep up with that growth, Tavares city leaders are considering an increase of municipal impact fees to keep up with the rising costs of services, such as police, fire and the parks and recreation department.
Impact fees are one-time charges on new construction to help recover, in full or in part, the costs associated with infrastructure and any growth-related capital improvements.
According to Vice Mayor Lori Pfister, the increase is long overdue, since the city of Tavares hadn’t raised its impact fees since 2006.
She says her priority is finding ways to curb the growth happening in Tavares.
“We can’t afford any more growth even if we wanted, with our infrastructure and our roads and our water supply," she said. "Everything needs to be addressed right now and I’m not going to keep allowing all these homes and taking away from people who have lived here — and they have a water supply shortage, and they can’t get out on the highway because they have to sit through the light three or four times. That’s just not right, that’s not who we want to be."
Curbing the growth will come with a more expensive price tag on new homes and businesses for developers, which Pfister said was the point.
"Since that’s what I was hearing from the residents, 'We’d rather pay more, because to me it’s always about quality of life and I don’t want to be forced to build a house because someone needs a house,'" she said. "There’s plenty of other places in the state of Florida if you want to live in the state of Florida. It doesn’t need to be Tavares. Our people want to keep our city like it is."
The U.S Census Bureau says the population in Tavares was 13,951 in 2010.
That number has climbed to 21,061 in 2023.
That doesn’t account for the growth that Tavares city leaders anticipate will come by 2034 — they are seeing an expected population of 28,161, which represents an annual 2.73%. growth rate annually.
With growth, city officials say there will come higher costs to compensate.
For a single-family home, developers would be paying just over $3,500 compared to the existing $1,058 impact fee, which accounts for more than three times the current amount.
According to the 2025 Municipal Impact Fee Study conducted by the Raftelis consulting firm, recent updates to the Florida Impact Fee Act provides limitations on increasing impact fees, outside of extraordinary circumstances.
Those circumstances include large inflationary costs and “additional capital improvements based on a significant increase in population growth.”
In their report, Raftelis said “the police, fire and parks and recreation impact fees demonstrate significant and extraordinary capital needs that justify having the fully calculated fees implemented.”
According to information from the city of Tavares, the vote to raise impact fees requires a two-thirds approval from city commissioners, since the impact fee increase is greater than 50%.
Pfister said she made the initial suggestion to council to raise the impact fees to help curb the growth happening in Tavares, because she doesn't want to see the city struck by mass development that leaves residents bearing the brunt by paying higher taxes.
The first reading of the ordinance to increase these fees is set to take place at 4 p.m. during Wednesday's City Council meeting.
