Traffic impact fees for new construction in Clark County may remain ...

Clark County commissioners are looking at freezing developers' payment of traffic impact fees again, as they have for the past two years, as a way to stimulate job and economic growth.

The commissioners will hold a public hearing at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 8, in their hearing room on the sixth floor of the Public Service Center at 1300 Franklin St. in Vancouver.

Impact fees are charges that local governments levy on new building projects. The fees reimburse a portion of the costs of building streets and roads. The fees are based on a complex formula calculating the number of vehicle trips generated by each new construction project.

Typically, the impact fees account pay from 7 to 12 percent of the costs of any road or street construction necessary to serve new construction, said Mike Mabrey, a county community planner. Clark County has nine major road projects on its schedule. The total estimated cost of the projects is some $441 million.

Mabrey said it wasn't clear how much money the county might lose by opting to freeze the fees. "We're working on that calculation and will have it in time for the hearing," he said.

Normally, traffic impact fees are increased every year as costs of improvements rise, but since 2010, the commissioners have waived the increase due to the struggling economy.

The commissioners believe that freezing the fees will encourage private businesses to continue their construction work by easing the financial burden, Mabrey said.

Officially, the commissioners will take public testimony on a resolution to temporarily forgo recalculation of the fees on developments approved from 2004 to 2010.

The decision would mean that developers with projects approved in that time frame would not see any increase in the fees. But new projects would face fees that are about 4 percent higher than last year, Mabrey said.

About 200 residential and 20 commercial developments would qualify for the freeze, Mabrey told commissioners in a staff report. "Budget implications are largely unknown," he wrote.

Understanding the calculation of a traffic impact fee is a challenge for policy wonks.

A contractor's bill is obtained by multiplying three factors: the traffic impact fee rate per trip in dollars times the trips generated by the project times the anticipated additional tax revenue from a development.

The dollar amounts in Clark County range from $76 in rural areas to $706 in north Orchards. Most dollar fees are $350 to $500. The other factors also vary.

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/clark-county/index.ssf/2013/01/clark_county_commissioners_may.html

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