Traffic Impact Fees - An Open Letter to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors
Dear Members of the Board of Supervisors:
I serve on the Board of Directors for Trinity Presbyterian Church of Spring Valley (“Trinity”). I am writing to urge you to approve the current proposal for the Traffic Impact Fee schedule (“TIF”) that you will be addressing at your April 13, 2005 meeting. I understand that the commercial building industry intends to come out in force against the TIF. Please do not fall to their pressure. We are looking to you as our elected officials to fix this problem. There are nearly 270 other project owners throughout the County who have projects that are in limbo because County staff knows it would be easier to collect a TIF than to work with a project owner to develop traffic mitigation measures on a project-by-project basis. Please do not delay a decision on this matter any further.
In the fall of 2003, Trinity formed a committee to explore the possibility of expanding the curriculum of Trinity Christian School to include 7th and 8th grades because of the limited availability of private Christian education in East County. I have donated a substantial amount of my time over the last 1½ years to see this project through. County staff informed us that we would need to file for a modification to Trinity’s Major Use Permit. Based on that information, we filed our MUP modification request in May 2004 with the hope that it would have been approved by now so construction of new classrooms could begin in time so the classrooms could available for the Fall 2005 semester.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that our application would still be pending nearly one year later. We were first informed of the need to prepare a traffic impact report in October 2004 and we could not get any guidance from County staff beyond a referral to County ordinances. We were finally able submit our traffic study in February 2005 and received 2 pages of staff comments in March 2005.
Traffic consultants throughout the County of San Diego are advising owners on small projects to delay the projects until Board of Supervisors reaches a decision on the TIF. The word on the street is that County staff has instructions not to approve ANY traffic studies until the Board of Supervisors approves the TIF. Staff has informed me that some of the current comments related to Trinity’s traffic study might be made irrelevant if you approve the TIF. Significantly, County staff refuses to inform project applicants what comments to our traffic study might be eliminated with adoption of the TIF
Between the County’s fees and the Church's expenses for architects, engineers, noises studies and other consultants, Trinity has spent more than $125,000 and we have not turned a single shovel of direct for our school expansion. Does that sound right for a project that was unanimously approved by our local planning group and has not received any opposition from Trinity’s neighbors? You can begin to see our quandary. Do we spend thousands more on traffic study that might be made moot by the TIF? Do we wait and see? Every single day of delay makes the likelihood of having our classrooms in place for the Fall 2005 semester more and more remote.
About the Author: Carl H. Starrett II has been a licensed attorney since 1993 and is a member in good standing with the California State Bar and the San Diego County Bar Association. Mr. Starrett practices in the areas of bankruptcy, business litigation, construction, corporate planning and debt collection.
I serve on the Board of Directors for Trinity Presbyterian Church of Spring Valley (“Trinity”). I am writing to urge you to approve the current proposal for the Traffic Impact Fee schedule (“TIF”) that you will be addressing at your April 13, 2005 meeting. I understand that the commercial building industry intends to come out in force against the TIF. Please do not fall to their pressure. We are looking to you as our elected officials to fix this problem. There are nearly 270 other project owners throughout the County who have projects that are in limbo because County staff knows it would be easier to collect a TIF than to work with a project owner to develop traffic mitigation measures on a project-by-project basis. Please do not delay a decision on this matter any further.
In the fall of 2003, Trinity formed a committee to explore the possibility of expanding the curriculum of Trinity Christian School to include 7th and 8th grades because of the limited availability of private Christian education in East County. I have donated a substantial amount of my time over the last 1½ years to see this project through. County staff informed us that we would need to file for a modification to Trinity’s Major Use Permit. Based on that information, we filed our MUP modification request in May 2004 with the hope that it would have been approved by now so construction of new classrooms could begin in time so the classrooms could available for the Fall 2005 semester.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that our application would still be pending nearly one year later. We were first informed of the need to prepare a traffic impact report in October 2004 and we could not get any guidance from County staff beyond a referral to County ordinances. We were finally able submit our traffic study in February 2005 and received 2 pages of staff comments in March 2005.
Traffic consultants throughout the County of San Diego are advising owners on small projects to delay the projects until Board of Supervisors reaches a decision on the TIF. The word on the street is that County staff has instructions not to approve ANY traffic studies until the Board of Supervisors approves the TIF. Staff has informed me that some of the current comments related to Trinity’s traffic study might be made irrelevant if you approve the TIF. Significantly, County staff refuses to inform project applicants what comments to our traffic study might be eliminated with adoption of the TIF
Between the County’s fees and the Church's expenses for architects, engineers, noises studies and other consultants, Trinity has spent more than $125,000 and we have not turned a single shovel of direct for our school expansion. Does that sound right for a project that was unanimously approved by our local planning group and has not received any opposition from Trinity’s neighbors? You can begin to see our quandary. Do we spend thousands more on traffic study that might be made moot by the TIF? Do we wait and see? Every single day of delay makes the likelihood of having our classrooms in place for the Fall 2005 semester more and more remote.
About the Author: Carl H. Starrett II has been a licensed attorney since 1993 and is a member in good standing with the California State Bar and the San Diego County Bar Association. Mr. Starrett practices in the areas of bankruptcy, business litigation, construction, corporate planning and debt collection.
posted by Carl Starrett @ 9:32 AM
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