Freeway Fee Vote Sought for Irvine : Councilman Agran Says Proposal to Charge Builders Amounts to New Tax

Councilman Larry Agran said he will ask the Irvine City Council tonight to hold an election on a plan to assess development fees to finance three new freeways in Orange County, claiming that the fees amount to a new tax.

The election proposal, outlined Monday, comes at a critical point for the transportation corridor fee program because Irvine’s participation is essential. Land developers there, with new freeways planned on both the eastern and western edges of the city, would contribute up to $150 million of the development fees, substantially more than any other city along the freeway routes.

Under the program, drafted by the county, builders would be required to pay up to $1,493 for each new dwelling, and additional fees for commercial and industrial buildings, for the traffic their projects generate on the proposed San Joaquin Hills, Foothill and Eastern freeways.

‘Right-to-Vote Ordinance’

Council members said they expect hundreds of residents to attend the 7:30 p.m. hearing on whether Irvine will join a coalition of cities seeking to form a new government authority to assess the fees.

Agran, a longtime opponent of the proposed freeways and the only Irvine councilman to oppose the fee program so far, said he would propose a “citizens’ right-to-vote ordinance” that would require the city to set an election before imposing new fees or taxes for the three proposed freeways, or any new roads of more than six lanes.

“If this proposal for these three freeways and their financing is a good one, the people ought to be persuaded of this,” Agran said.

In his own view, Agran said, the proposed joint-powers agreement with the county and 10 other cities for assessing the fees “represents the city delegating its authority to a joint-powers authority and denying its citizens the right to have any say . . . . I’m absolutely against it.”

Mayor David Sills said, however, there is “no need” to put the issue to a public vote. He called Agran’s proposal “a delaying tactic.”

“My own surveying shows there is overwhelming support for transportation in the city,” he said. Sills said a poll on the corridor plan that he mailed out last week came back “20 to 1 in support for transportation solutions and the corridor program.”

Extra Lanes Unpopular

Sills said, however, that the council is likely to oppose any car pool-bus lanes or climbing lanes for trucks on the San Joaquin Hills freeway.

Irvine is the second city along the corridor route to act on the proposed corridor fee program agreement.

Laguna Beach, which has long opposed the San Joaquin Hills freeway, last week rejected the agreement, which the Orange County Transportation Commission approved on Monday. Controversy over the fee program, which would be the largest of its kind ever imposed in California, has been increasing.

While the Orange County Building Industry Assn. supports the fees--primarily because it sees them as the only way of paying for the freeways, which together will cost more than $1 billion--opposition from small builders has been mounting.

Russ Burkett, vice president of a company that is building a 2,000-dwelling community in San Clemente, said the fees would be more difficult for small builders because they would have to finance them over several years, between the time they actually paid the fee and the time they sell the house.

By then, the average fee on one house could amount to as much as $5,500, he said. And, if the entire fee is passed on to the buyer and paid through a 30-year mortgage, it could wind up costing as much as $14,000, Burkett said.

“One just has to draw a line and say, ‘Is that what we think is a good process, or are we taxing the wrong people?’ ” Burkett said. “What they’re doing is: they’re taxing the people who don’t live here now, who don’t have a voice in the community. In effect, they’re taxing my kids and their right to buy a house in the community.”

Burkett was active in the opposition to Proposition A, the unsuccessful ballot measure that would have raised the sales tax in Orange County by 1 cent per dollar to pay for transportation improvements, including some of the cost of the new freeways.

The Building Industry Assn. has urged the county to study alternatives to development fees, such as assessment districts and toll roads, before the fee program is adopted in early May by the new joint-powers authority.

The association is also urging the county to lower the fees proposed for neighborhood commercial development and to include more territory in the assessments, such as areas near John Wayne Airport and South Coast Plaza.

The proposed expansion of John Wayne Airport could be assessed a corridor fee ranging from $400,000 to $1 million if it were made subject to the charges, said John Erskine, Building Industry Assn. director.