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City slashes proposed traffic fee increases
| Tuesday, Aug 19 2008 5:26 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Aug 19 2008 5:26 PM
Bakersfield officials have cut the proposed traffic fee increase for developers, and even offered a yearlong “economic stimulus” discount on top of that.
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But developers are still fighting for more cuts, leading a city council committee to on Tuesday put off its recommendation for two more weeks.
Under the latest proposal, the development fee for a new home would be $12,325 in the first year, then $13,703 after that. It’s currently $9,553.
The proposed fee has dropped 5 percent for houses and 41 percent for a small retail building from what the city proposed in June.
Civil Engineer Marian Shaw said the city re-evaluated the impact housing and commercial buildings have on traffic, and moved a larger share of the burden to the residential side.
City Manager Alan Tandy said he’s not too worried about the effect of the fee on new housing because there are thousands of residential lots already vested to the current, lower fee.
But those rules don’t apply to commercial buildings, he said, and many projects that have been in the planning stages for years would get hit with the higher fee.
The “economic stimulus” program would give developers a 10 percent discount on the fee if they lock down their plans in the next year.
Developer Lee Jamieson said the new proposal is a big improvement as the last one would have shut down commercial development.
“This is painful,” he said of the new proposal, “but this is probably livable.”
But homebuilder David Cates disagreed with Tandy’s assessment of the housing market. He said his company has about 600 units with vesting that will expire, sticking them with the higher costs.
Councilman Ken Weir noted that Bakersfield tends to charge more for a home than a small commercial site, unlike most other Central Valley cities.
Public Works Director Raul Rojas said Bakersfield tends to focus on counting rooftops, because commercial development tends to lag a few years behind residential.
Councilman Zack Scrivner, chairman of the Planning and Development Committee, said he wanted to put off adoption to give developers a chance to meet with staff next week.
If the committee votes to recommend the fee at its next meeting, Sept. 4, it will go to the city council on Sept. 17 — just as it would have if the committee had made its recommendation Tuesday.