OVIEDO, Fla. – For years, small business owners in Oviedo say they’ve been blindsided by the city — investing their savings into land and buildings, only to discover fees worth tens of thousands of dollars that no one warned them about until it was too late to turn back.
Mike Lombardo has kept Yard Fellas running in Oviedo for 28 years. Business was good, so he invested in land to store his trucks and equipment. But the moment that purchase went through, he says the city started moving the goalposts.
“I don’t know what to even believe. I’ve been misled, I’ve been lied to so many times, and so many roadblocks have been put up,” said Mike Lombardo, owner of Yard Fellas.
Lombardo says the fees weren’t part of any conversation before he committed to the property. Every time he submitted paperwork, new requirements surfaced.
“We’re at $220,000 to own the property and now the City of Oviedo has me upwards of $300,000. I’m $80,000 to $100,000 in just to make them happy,” Lombardo explained.
He wasn’t alone
Greg Cordner opened Iron Gate Luxury RV Storage just a few months ago. He says surprise fees from the city nearly stopped him before he could open his gates.
“After you have demolished your buildings and started your construction, then the meetings start happening about the loose ends. And then you find out that there’s some things in there you don’t like, and some are very expensive, and a lot of them they can’t explain very well,” said Cordner. “By the time we got into the project, we started choking on some of the things they were throwing at us that seemed unreasonable and overpriced.”
The fees that kept coming
News 6’s Pavlina Osta asked both business owners to detail what the city required. The list was long: impact fees, a mobility strategy, signage, trees, sidewalk installation, a bus stop, stop signs, and even a bicycle repair station.
In Lombardo’s case, he says the city was charging him as if he had a building on the property — even though he didn’t have one. News 6 asked the city to explain.
Development Services Director Teresa Correa told News 6 that the fees are not created by city staff, they are written into Oviedo’s land development code and approved by the city council.
“The developer is required by the code. These are not things that staff will create. These are standards established in the land development code, which is approved by City Council,” said Correa.
When asked whether the city would rewrite the language to make it clearer for first-time applicants, Correa acknowledged the process needs work.
“I think what we are learning from this case is how we can adapt the language, the communication from staff to an applicant who has never been through the process, to make sure they understand what we are saying,” Correa explained.
Oviedo is a small town growing fast, and business owners say the city needs to catch up with how it handles new development. The city is now pledging to be more upfront about required fees before a project gets started.
All fees in the land development code are approved by the city council.
Like all municipalities in Florida, Oviedo is audited annually to ensure it is charging the proper amounts.