POULSBO — When the city’s 20-year transportation plan finally parks itself in front of the full city council this year, traffic impact fees will be increased and the level of service will be redefined.

The three parts of the proposed plan are: the transportation plan, which outlines all of the anticipated road improvements for the next two decades; the traffic impact fee ordinance; and the concurrency of the ordinance, which will be used to test the legality of the new ordinance, City Engineer Andrzej Kasiniak said during Wednesday’s city council public works committee meeting.

“You’re bringing it as a cycle, and there are three components,” Councilman Mike Regis said, noting that all three pieces should stay together.

However, before the plan reaches the council’s agenda, city staff needs to ensure that a potential State Environmental Protection Act component isn’t overlooked, Regis said.

“I want to see if there’s a SEPA component that will delay it,” Regis said.

While noting Regis’ concerns about the SEPA, Kasiniak said the enactment of the proposed traffic impact fee ordinance is critical to the city’s 2007 transportation budget.

The city has already used the traffic mitigation fees collected from Wal-Mart and The Home Depot to fund the Caldart Avenue improvements and other projects in 2007, but still must fund its transportation plan, Kasiniak said.

“I plan to do a workshop sometime next month and follow with the adoption,” Kasiniak said. “Hopefully, we can get the CAO (Critical Areas Ordinance), PUD (Planned Unit Development Ordinance) and traffic impact fee ordinance done at once.”

Even though all three ordinances will have significant impacts, the council needs to hear from the public about the traffic impact fee ordinance specifically, because it means a dramatic increase in costs, Councilman Ed Stern said.

Under the proposed ordinance, traffic fees for a single family residence would go from $440 to about $6,140 based on a charge of $614 per vehicle trip and an estimated 100 daily trips per single family residence.

“Call it a public hearing or a public meeting, but there’s going to be the Noll Road side of the equation and the developer/builder side,” Stern said, adding that the council must be prepared to answer questions from both sides and explain the reason prompting the increase.

“We need to develop numbers for surrounding cities and comparable cities,” Stern said. “It needs to be ‘apples to apples.’”

In addition to adopting its traffic impact fee ordinance, the council will be asked to revise the city’s definition of traffic level of service.

Currently, that level is based on delays at intersections, but under the new definition, it would be based on delays at intersections and the travel times on road sections, Kasiniak said.

Based up on the type of road, the level of service would vary with the number of vehicles, Kasiniak said, noting that what would be acceptable on State Route 305 would be unacceptable on residential streets.

“The level of service that we have defined as the standard is E, because that’s all we can afford,” said Councilman Jeff McGinty.

For instance, Noll Road could have 10 times as much traffic as it does today and would still be at an acceptable level of service according to the city’s proposed standards, McGinty said.

“I can (see) Pugh Road getting to the point that people say it’s really bad when it’s only Level D,” he said. “It won’t change anything until it gets worse.”

Because the city’s accepted level of service is E, improvements won’t be considered or made until the traffic reaches a level F, he said.

“I don’t know if we can go to Level D,” McGinty said.

Going to a higher level of service would impact the city and developers because it would mean increased costs for both, Public Works Director Jeff Bauman said.

“It would probably hit us harder, because we would have to improve our existing deficiencies,” Bauman said.

Because the proposed plan represents a significant change from the city’s current plan, the council needs to take the extra step of having a public hearing or meeting on the plan, even though it may not be required, Stern said.

“We need to lay it out in layman’s terms and be ready to explain it,” Stern said, adding that the key to the plan’s approval is keeping the public as informed as possible.