The Regional Development Impact Fee program was adopted by the Transportation Agency Board of Directors and each of the jurisdictions and went into effect in August 2008. As part of the Joint Powers Agreement that established the program, and state law, the Agency is required to conduct a major update to the fee program once every five years.
In August 2017, the TAMC Board approved the selection of Wood Rodgers to conduct the technical work necessary to update the regional fees to reflect any changes that may have occurred in the past five years, such as: updates to population, employment and housing projections utilized in the regional travel forecast model, the expected pace of new development, changes in land use plans including general plan updates, the need for new transportation projects based on growth, and estimated project costs.
This update also evaluated incorporating the Fort Ord Reuse Authority zone into the regional fee program. The regional fee program segments the County into four distinct zones - North County, Peninsula / South Coast, Greater Salinas, and South County. Currently, development projects located within the FORA boundary only pay the FORA Community Facilities District fee and are exempt by policy from payment of the regional fee. With the planned sunset of FORA in 2020, the Transportation Agency has been coordinating with FORA staff and the FORA Transition Task Force on the potential transfer of regional impact fee responsibilities to the regional fee program. For this study, staff evaluated two scenarios for including the FORA area in the regional fee program: 1) as a separate fifth zone covering the FORA boundary; and 2) as part of the existing greater Monterey Peninsula zone.
Using the AMBAG Regional Travel Demand Model, the consultant, Wood Rodgers, identified the existing and future traffic congestion (or "deficiencies") on the regional transportation network in order to determine where roadway improvements will be needed by the 2035 horizon-year. The baseline model scenario assumed all planned population and employment growth over the next 20 years, but no new roadway improvements. After the identifying where regional roadways were anticipated to be congested due to this future growth, the team selected fourteen transportation improvement projects to analyze as potential future improvements to include in the fee program.
Staff reviewed this draft list of projects with the Technical Advisory Committee at the February 2018 meeting, and made updates based on feedback from Committee members. Wood Rodgers then conducted an additional model run, assuming the construction of the proposed transportation improvements, to evaluate whether or not these projects relieved congestion, and which zones the new vehicle trips were coming from. After this review, staff recommends that twelve projects be included in the 2018 Regional Development Impact Fee (the list of projects and draft fees are attached).
The two projects not recommended to be included are the State Route 1 / Monterey Road Interchange and the Del Monte Boulevard (Marina) Extension. These two projects were included in the models runs since they are also included in the FORA Capital Improvement Program. However, the modeling showed that the benefits from these projects are localized to the Peninsula / FORA area, whereas the other regional fee projects show benefits across multiple zones. Therefore, staff recommends that it is more appropriate to fund these projects solely by development within the former Fort Ord.
As compared to the 2013 Regional Development Impact Fee Nexus Study, the draft 2018 regional fee schedule shows a minor increase in the fee per trip for the North County and Greater Salinas zones, an increase of $346 to the fee per trip for the Peninsula zone (from $207 to $553), and a slight decrease for the South County zone. Part of the reason for the change in the fees is that this 2018 study used a newer version of the AMBAG model that forecasts fewer vehicle trips countywide from the version used in the 2013 study. In addition, the costs for several projects included in the 2018 study, such as State Routes 68 and 156, have increased significantly since the previous study. The share of the increased costs were weighted more towards the North County, Greater Salinas, and Peninsula zones based on the distribution of new vehicle trips around the county. This increase in the share of costs for the North County, Greater Salinas, and Peninsula zones coupled with a decrease in the number of vehicle trips is the primary reason for the increase in the fee per trip. The South County zone, however, remains consistent with the 2013 study as the share of project costs attributable to this zone decreased at a similar rate as the vehicle trips.
With respect to the FORA area, of the two scenarios studied, the first option considered keeping the FORA zone separate and resulted in a fee per trip of $458. This is comparable to the current FORA Community Facilities District fee per trip of $489 for projects where the two programs overlap. The second scenario considered merging the FORA zone with the Peninsula zone, which resulted in a fee per trip of $525 for the combined area.
The final steps for the fee update are for the Board of Directors to provide input, confirm the draft regional fees by benefit zone and adopt the 2018 Regional Fee Nexus Study Update. After TAMC Board approval, the final report and updated fees will be circulated for review and approval by the cities and the County.