The Fort Ord Reuse Authority (FORA) is responsible for the oversight of the economic recovery from the closure and reuse of the former Fort Ord military base. FORA's efforts are guided by the Base Reuse Plan, first adopted in June 1997, and the 2005 FORA Fee Reallocation Study. These documents establish the circulation and roadway network related to FORA, identify the impacts from new development, and prompts the annual development of a Capital Improvement Program. FORA's Capital Improvement Program includes transportation improvements that are "on site" or within the former base, "off site" and "regional". The latter two categories include significant overlap with the projects in the Regional Development Impact Fee program. Attached is a table comparing the projects in FORA and TAMC's programs. The FORA zone is the only part of the county in which the TAMC impact fee does not currently apply, and the FORA fee revenues are allocated to projects by its Board of Directors, rather than the Transportation Agency Board.
With the planned sunset of FORA in 2020, the FORA Board established a Transition Task Force to plan for how transportation improvements, along with several other issues, will be addressed Post-FORA by reviewing the potential options for how the goals of the Base Reuse Plan can be fully implemented by other agencies and local jurisdictions after FORA. In addition to the development of a Transition Plan, FORA has also discussed the possibility of a short-term legislative extension of FORA. The intent of a legislative extension of FORA would be to maintain the Authority to allow it sufficient time to complete the CEQA mitigations of the Base Reuse Plan, manage critical habitat, and retain the area's property tax increment funding. If a legislative extension is not passed at the State-level, FORA's responsibilities will need to be passed on to other agencies.
Under either scenario, there is an argument to be made that integration of the FORA zone into the countywide Regional Development Impact Fee program would be advantageous. In fact, the FORA Transition Task Force has identified the Transportation Agency as a successor to assume the regional and off site components of FORA's Capital Improvement Program, with on site projects becoming the responsibility of the underlying local jurisdictions. The Transportation Agency's Regional Development Impact Fee is coordinated with the FORA Community Facilities District fee to assure that new development pays its fair-share for transportation improvements but is not double-charged for mitigations. Essentially, new development located within the former Fort Ord currently is required to pay the FORA Community Facilities District fee and not the TAMC Regional Development Impact Fee.
TAMC’s 2018 update to its Regional Development Impact Fee (RDIF) program added a FORA zone that provides a cost per trip fee calculation consistent with RDIF county-wide methodology used since its inception in 2008. TAMC does have the authority to start collecting the Regional Fees in the FORA zone at the discretion of the Transportation Agency Board of Directors. If FORA were to sunset, or even before then, the Transportation Agency decide to take on the obligation for the off site and regional projects by simply activating the FORA zone to collect regional fees for those transportation improvements.
The FORA Board will hold a special meeting on October 19th to discuss transition issues and seek approval of a transition plan. Transportation Agency staff will attend the FORA special meeting and provide an update on FORA transition issues at the October 24th Transportation Agency Board of Directors meeting.