Purpose of a Mobility Fee:

Starting in 1985, the State of Florida required that local governments make development approvals conditioned upon adequate road capacity.   The capacity had to be shown to exist, or planned within a five year Transportation Improvement Program, in order to obtain a “certificate of concurrency” (meaning that the development was built “concurrent” with available infrastructure to support it).  Local governments learned that the concurrency system had some major flaws.  One of the biggest flaws of concurrency is that it pushed development out and away from urban areas to find capacity on rural roadways, further encouraging the damaging effect of urban sprawl.  Secondly, concurrency assured that the first developers in line were given a free ride, until concurrency ran out.  The last developer in line was then forced to pay for all of the improvements required to accommodate their development, and all their predecessors.  It would be like a group of people crowding into an elevator, and when the weight limit was finally reached, the elevator operator would inform the last person that they would need to pay for an upgrade to the whole elevator system.  It was an unfair system, and financially impossible for the last user to meet the requirement. In 2011, House Bill 7207 was signed by the Florida Legislature effectively removing transportation concurrency as a requirement and leaving it up to local governments to best meet their transportation planning needs.

Nassau County is currently in the planning stages of a new system to replace concurrency called a Mobility Fee. The new Mobility Fee will be a “pay to play” system wherein everybody pays regardless of place in line.  The County will look at a long range picture, the year 2035, and using our long range Comprehensive Plan, determine what roads and other transportation solutions will be required.  This list of transportation solutions, or improvements, will be a very large pie that will be cut into small slices for each developer in line from now until the planning horizon.  Each developer will pay an appropriate mobility fee depending on the size of their slice of the pie.  Nassau County will follow in the footsteps of three other local governments that have already implemented similar systems: Pasco County, Alachua County, and the City of Jacksonville.

It is important the County have a mobility fee to require new growth to pay for itself.  Without some kind of “impact” fee to support new development, tax payers would be required to pay the bill for the required transportation improvements.

Additional Information:

Impact Fee & Concurrency Task Force's Guiding Principles

Frequently Asked Questions