LAKEPORT — On Tuesday, city council members met with county supervisors to discuss proposed transportation impact fees for the cities of Lakeport, Clearlake and the county.
With a recession nation-wide that is being felt in the county and soaring unemployment rates topping 10 percent ? almost four percent above the state average ? Lakeport City Councilman Jim Irwin thinks the proposed fees would force new businesses to think twice about building in the area.
“If fees of this magnitude are approved, it would put a halt to a lot of projects, especially with the housing market being what it is today. These aren”t fees that can be passed on to the consumer,” Irwin said.
There are no transportation fees in the county. Phil Dow, senior transportation planner for the county”s area planning council, has been working in the county for more than 20 years, and said the fees are just one planning option. He said the fees will likely be tweaked and it could take about six months of discussion between the three entities involved ? the two cities and the county ? before a decision is made.
At the Tuesday meeting the goal was “to get all three entities in the same room so they wouldn”t hear it three different times. We said, ?this is why we did it this way, what do you want to do? Yeah, we know the numbers are scary, but it”s what we think is reality,”” Dow said.
The fees would be charged to developers when a new building is constructed, and go to pay for road improvements.
For the Lakeport planning area, which extends beyond city limits, the projected cost of road improvement projects over the next 20 years is about $54 million. Those costs would be shared by a projected 3,088 EDU”s (Equivalent Dwelling Units). Based on how much traffic is generated per an individual EDU ? such as a fast food restaurant, apartment complex or any other of the myriad business development possibilities ? each business would expect to pay about $17,613 per EDU it would generate. A single business could generate less than a whole EDU, or up to several EDU”s, Dow said.
Trip generation books with standard EDU”s for various types of developments would be implemented in order to determine how much each development would pay. The fees would apply only to new developments.
“If a business came in and disagreed, it would be on them to get a traffic engineer and produce their own study and then we would negotiate with them,” Dow said.
He said the fees are a funding option the county has considered before. In addition, the county has a construction vehicle impact fee and refuse vehicle impact fee in order to recover some of the costs of impacts those trucks have on county roads. The transportation fee program was first introduced in 1989. “We had exactly the same kind of meeting in 1991 [as the one Tuesday]. Two who were there [Supervisor Ed Robey and Lakeport Councilman Roy Parmentier] are going through it again. Both of those people believe now they should have done something,” Dow said.
Parmentier said, “Yes, we should have done something then. At the time there was no building going on, so at the time it didn”t seem like the thing to do. There needs to be a whole lot of changes [to the fee proposals] from what we saw the other day.”
He said the Lakeport City Council will likely discuss the fee proposal within the next two weeks. “This is too big of an item not to stay on top of,” Parmentier said.
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com
