A two-year battle over traffic impact fees comes to a head Tuesday.
A committee of the Bakersfield City Council is slated to make a final vote on developer fees and move the issue to the full Council later this month. The meeting is at noon Tuesday in the City Hall building right across Truxtun Avenue from the police station.
And more than half-a-billion dollars in federal transportation funds hang in the balance.
The ultimate goal is to avoid L.A style gridlock in metropolitan Bakersfield, by building new freeways and thoroughfares.
Impact fees on new home construction would allow the city and the county to generate required matching funds for the $630 million in federal transportation money earmarked for Bakersfield.
The City Council originally approved a doubling of impact fees to nearly $15,000 per new home constructed, but will likely scale it back by a couple thousand dollars to match the county's new fees.
But developers have been aggressively trying to lower the fees, saying they would cripple their ailing industry.
"We've had the worst recession since the depression. Adding another $6,000 more to the fee now would be a disaster, not just for home prices but for appraisals too," said home builder matt Towery.
Developers have asked the city to lower the fee, by slashing the list of road construction projects the fees will pay for.
The home builders association recently submitted more than 50 questions in writing to the city, seeking an accounting of how impact fees have been spent in recent years.
But the HBA's executive director says the city has been less than transparent.
"We've made requests. We have submitted a public records request due to our inability to deal with it at a lower level. We just went through this with the county and they were more than willing to sit down with us in an attempt to find a compromise. We haven't had that experience with the City of Bakersfield so far," said HBA Executive Officer Bob Decker.
"We've held 23 meetings with the HBA. We have produced a stack of information this thick in response to their questions. To argue that we haven't been transparent, I guess the only explanation is that he's so new he doesn't know what's been going on," said Bakersfield City Manager Alan Tandy.
Tandy agrees it's a bad time to raise impact fees, given the current economy, but says its crucial to get the new fees in place before construction on a host of new road projects takes off in about five years.
Developers are fighting this battle on two fronts.
The city and county must implement identical impact fee programs.
The revenue generated will be used to make payments on money borrowed to match federal transportation funds earmarked by former Congressman Bill Thomas.
The city council's planning and development committee is expected to take action on the new impact fees Tuesday.
