LAKE COUNTY — Two-and-a-half years of work on finding money for road projects countywide will culminate in a 1:30 p.m. meeting today of the Lake County Board of Supervisors and city councils and staff from Clearlake and Lakeport.
The municipalities will discuss charging fees in their respective jurisdictions for citizens and business constructing new buildings or adding to existing buildings, according to Area Planning Commission staff consultant Phil Dow. Dow headed up the project, which began with building a model for traffic in all of Lake County, including the two cities.
“The traffic mitigation fee is to cover the cumulative effect of all of the little pieces of development that are happening all over the county, for which there is no current method of generating funds to take care of things we know will be needed in the future,” Dow said.
The Roseville transportation consulting firm Omni-Means, Ltd. will make a presentation that addresses Lake County”s traffic needs for the next 20 years, according to Dow. He said proposed fees would pay to widen roads, install traffic signals and add turning lanes to existing roads, among other projects.
“We”re talking about increasing capacity ? widening roads to get more volume through on a specific street or road,” Dow said.
Dow said he expects the discussion to be controversial, because it is perceived as a tax.
“It”s not a tax, it”s a fee. We just want to get the elected people to hear the same presentation at the same time and then judge for themselves,” Dow said.
Fees would vary depending on the needs of a particular area, according to Dow. He said the traffic mitigation project proposes to establish six districts in the county ? the Northshore, Clearlake, Lower Lake, Middletown, Cobb, the Kelseyville Rivieras and greater Lakeport.
“There isn”t any one fee proposed countywide at this time. There are different needs in different parts of the county. In establishing a nexus, you have to show that there is a reasonable chance that the person being charged a fee ? say if you”re building a house in the Middletown area ? is going to be using the facility that is going to be built with the fee,” Dow said.
County Public Works Director Brent Siemer said a list of all traffic projects needed through the year 2030 in Lake County was whittled to a list of the “most critical” projects, leaving the county to find money to pay for projects that were cut. Approximately half of the projects in the proposal would improve state routes, he said.
Developers must already pay a 0.5 percent fee for the total value of a new project as part of a building permit, as long as the project”s value is $10,000 or more. The fee goes to pay for road maintenance. The fees to be considered Tuesday would be separate from that fee, according to Dow, and cannot be used for road maintenance.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevellef@record-bee.com.
