Eric Montgomery drives over an hour each morning to get to the schools across Osceola County where he serves as a substitute teacher. Then he drives nearly an hour back home, even though he is often covering less than 15 miles.

For the Bellalago resident, the trips to St. Cloud are the worst. “When I teach up in St. Cloud I get on the road at 6 a.m. so the traffic isn’t as bad,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery is just one of the hundreds of thousands of commuters in Osceola County who sit in traffic on a daily basis. The county is attempting to fund over $2 billion in road improvement projects but finding that much money is difficult and county commissioners are looking at the city of St. Cloud as part of the problem.

St. Cloud, the fastest growing area of the county, has long seen residents angry about overdevelopment and the accompanying jammed roads. A recent study commissioned by the county found that traffic will only increase. The study cited one thoroughfare, Kissimmee Park Road, that currently has 11,000 trips per day will reach 43,000 a day by 2045.

St. Cloud and Osceola County have had a joint planning agreement since 2014 that aimed at managing growth through shared revenues collected through impact fees. But now county commissioners are complaining that the effort is falling short because St. Cloud isn’t willing to charge builders enough in so-called mobility fees to fix the road problems their developments cause.

“Working with St. Cloud, I know we’ve had some issues and I know there’s some concerns with…making sure that we’re charging the maximum amount of impact fees, which the county has in place, to be able to move [road improvement] forward,” Commissioner Brandon Arrington said at the meeting. “I want to throw it out there if we might want to take a look at doing away with our JPA.”

Commissioner Ricky Booth, whose district encompasses the city, agreed that St. Cloud is falling short.

“I think that any municipality in a high growth area like we are should have the highest mobility fees that they can possibly have,” Booth said.

Projects the county is looking to fund in St. Cloud include widening Simpson Road from two lanes to four, and widening and extending Kissimmee Park Road so that it connects to the Florida Turnpike.

County Manager Don Fisher estimated that St. Cloud charges half of what the county charges developers in mobility fees. In 2023 the county charged between $5,000 and $15,000 per housing unit dependent on where the development was located.

Dave Tomek, St. Cloud’s assistant city manager, said his city intends to propose a solution to commissioners’ concerns, in the form of a joint mobility fee that will increase the amount for both the city and the county.

Ending the joint planning agreement would make it harder to get adequate funding and get projects built quickly, Tomek said.

“I just can’t see that happening but I just don’t know,” Tomek said. “The JPA makes it easier because then both jurisdictions know the area that we’re planning for and we can work together so under some circumstances it might change the way we look at the mobility fee.”

But Booth is worried that the St. Cloud city council might not approve a joint mobility fee that assumes growth will continue, as the city council often votes against development. Booth said getting the two jurisdictions on the same page is key.

“It’s always good when this body and that body can get together because if you listen to what some of those councilmen are saying, their goals and my goals are really aligned,” Booth said.

The county has tried many ways of funding road improvement in the past.

In November Fisher asked the state for $6 million in funding to extend the Cross Prairie Parkway connector, a congested road in the southeastern portion of the county that aims to connect to the Florida Turnpike.

In 2022 the county created the controversial Northeast Infrastructure Improvement Trust Fund, which allows it to use tax increment financing to fund road improvements near the master planned community of Sunbridge. This financing method captures the new tax money generated when property values increase, and so it encourages development to drive up tax revenues.

County commissioners unanimously agreed Monday to review the joint planning agreement with St. Cloud at a workshop meeting that has not yet been set.