City Council assesses new transportation plan

Published 2:00 pm Wednesday, December 20, 2006

POULSBO — When the Poulsbo City Council took its first test drive through the city’s proposed 20-year transportation plan Dec. 13, it ran into a $44 million pothole.

That pothole is the estimated cost of traffic improvements to maintain the city’s current level of service, and fortunately consultant Mike Birdsall had a patch to fill the void.

With an approximate 43,000 new daily trips being generated by vehicles in the next 20 years, the cost per trip would be $1,024, or $10,240 per single family home, but since the city anticipates receiving several million dollars in state and federal funds, that amount would be reduced, Birdsall said.

With only $11 million expected in public funding, the city would need $614 per trip or $6,140 per single family house to pay for the future improvements, he said.

“That’s probably a bigger number than you thought of in Poulsbo for impact fees, but that’s reality,” he said.

However, Poulsbo would still be in the same range as other cities its size, even with the increase, Birdsall said. The highest traffic impact fee in the state is in Sammamish, where it is about $15,000 per home.

Currently, the city uses the State Environmental Protection Act to collect traffic impact fees, City Engineer Andrzej Kasiniak said.

“The problem is if we have a big road project next to a (building) project, some of the cost isn’t spread evenly,” Kasiniak said.

But if the council adopts the proposed traffic impact fee ordinance, those costs would be more equally distributed among the development community, he said.

The ordinance would also streamline the city’s fee collection process — developers would know upfront what the traffic impact fees will be instead of waiting until a SEPA determination is made, Kasiniak said.

Listening to the traffic impact fee increase discussion caused Councilman Ed Stern to remind the rest of the council of the impacts of the city’s sewer rate increase in 2001.

“Previous councils resisted increasing fees. and when we finally had to upgrade it was a tremendous jump,” Stern said. “We need to be careful of that in this traffic impact fee ordinance.”

Councilman Jim Henry asked Birdsall for his professional opinion on the timing of the proposed fee increase.

“Are we on time with this or are we a little bit late,” Henry asked.

“A little bit late, you should have done this about a year ago,” Birdsall replied. “But you can do quite a bit with SEPA.”

The public will get an opportunity to provide input on the proposed transportation plan and traffic impact fee increase in early 2007.