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 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 development, changes in land use plans including general plan updates, project need and cost, and population growth projections.

This update process will also include an evaluation of incorporating the Fort Ord Reuse Authority zone into the regional fee program.  Currently, development projects located within the FORA boundary only pay the FORA Community Facilities District fee and are exempt 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 impact fee responsibilities to the regional fee program.  The FORA Board has recently recommended the transfer of transportation obligations to a new single-entity joint powers agency upon the sunset of FORA, which will require the approval of the Monterey County Local Agency Formation Commission.  The evaluation of incorporating the FORA zone into the Regional Fee program can be accomplished with the existing model runs needed to update the fee program (thus resulting in no additional work) and will provide additional data and information to inform the transition process.

After performing a validation of the AMBAG Regional Travel Demand Model, Wood Rodgers identified the existing and future deficiencies to the regional transportation network.  Existing and projected future conditions deficiencies on regional roadway facilities throughout Monterey County were identified to assist TAMC staff with the selection of transportation improvement projects to be included in the current 2018 Regional Fee Nexus Study Update. Deficiencies were identified using current traffic count data, the latest available version of the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments regional travel demand model, and standard Highway Capacity Manual methodologies.  The modeling output showing the existing and future roadway deficiencies are included as Attachment 1.

In order to determine where roadway improvements will be needed by the 2035 horizon-year, a model scenario was run that assumed full buildout of all population and employment growth over the next approximately 20 years, but no roadway improvements over existing conditions. The AMBAG Regional Travel Demand Model was run using the horizon-year 2035 land use database and base-year 2010  roadway network (with updates to better reflect existing conditions). This run has been labeled the “Constrained Year 2035” model run since no planned system improvements over existing circulation/capacity conditions are assumed.  In order to address the deficiencies to the regional network that were identified with this model run, staff has prepared a draft listing of proposed improvement projects for the 2018 Regional Fee Nexus Study Update that is included as Attachment 2 for Committee review.

Once Agency staff confirms the list of improvement projects, the next steps in the update process will be for Wood Rodgers to conduct additional model runs assuming the construction of the proposed improvement projects to evaluate network system performance, to prepare planning-level project cost updates, and to develop an updated draft regional development impact fee schedule.  This will culminate in a final 2018 Regional Fee Nexus Study Update report.  Agency staff is anticipating to complete this work by May 2018, which will then be circulated for review and approval by the jurisdictions.