Nipomo Road Impact Fees To Rise

From today's Adobe Press, we read that the County Board of Supervisors have raised Nipomo's road impact fees up to 25 percent:

Without much discussion and virtually no public comment, the Board of Supervisors unanimously increased road impact fees Tuesday.

The 25-percent increase will become effective in mid-February and be imposed on all new development from the southern edge of Arroyo Grande throughout Nipomo.

Road impact fees are calculated based on the estimated number of vehicle trips certain types of development — commercial, residential and other — will likely add to an area during peak traffic hours.

The fees are collected to help offset impacts of new development on a community’s existing circulation system and can’t be used to fix existing circulation deficiencies.

How interesting there was almost no discussion and very little public comment, as noted in the Adobe. Usually in Nipomo, there is quite a hue and cry when local government proposes to and then does raise taxes. And, quite frankly that's exactly what the road impact fees are--just a rose by another name. I suspect one reason there was barely a mention is that these taxes aren't noticeable by current residents per se. They will be costs that are going to be passed on to new home owners once their developments are built and approved. This means higher housing prices in Nipomo. In an already hot housing market, new home prices will continue to rise.

The fee increase is considerable:

The area where the fees are collected is split into two assessment areas — Area 1 and Area 2. Area 1 is mostly south of Willow Road and includes Olde Towne Nipomo, while Area 2 is mostly north of Willow Road and extends to the border of Arroyo Grande.

Fees in Area 1 will increase from $6,835 per trip to $8,557 for residential development, from $1,058 to $1,325 for retail projects and from $3,528 to $4,117 for other developments.

Area 2 fees will rise from $6,702 to $8,391 per trip for residential, from $1,452 to $1,818 for commercial and from $4,839 to $6,057 for other developments.

More troubling, than the fee increase, however, is the suggestion that these impact fees specifically collected for use in Nipomo to mitigate traffic increases, might be spent elsewhere:

However, Supervisor Katcho Achadjian, who represents Nipomo, Oceano and Halcyon, said he doesn’t like the idea of fees collected in Nipomo being spent elsewhere.

“I want to be on the record saying, ‘I don’t want any money from Nipomo going to the realignment of Halcyon Road,’” Achadjian said. “I want us to focus our efforts on working to widen Highway 1 and leave Halcyon the way it is.”

San Luis Obispo County has not been a very good steward in terms of spending Nipomo's tax revenues in Nipomo. This Tribune article from 2004 outlines how Nipomo Park fees have been spent all over the county--but not necessarily in Nipomo:

A decade-long growth spurt has netted Nipomo nearly $5 million in revenue for park and recreation projects, but so far, only $1.5 million has been spent in the community.

Residents worry the remaining $3.5 million will be siphoned off to towns like Cambria and Los Osos, under the county's system of pooling fees for countywide use . . .

Pete Jenny, San Luis Obispo County's parks director, defends the way development fees are divvied up.

"If all we did was spend money where growth was," he said, "we would not be doing anything in Los Osos, though that's probably, on a per-acre basis, the most underparked community we have."

Nipomo is one of the fastest growing communities, if not the fastest growing in the county. If history is any guide, we need to keep a close eye on those road impact fees to insure that the county spends them in Nipomo and not elsewhere, as it appears park fees are or have been.