Waivers Make Expected Funds for Road Work Fall Far Short

Riverside County and city leaders have waived nearly a quarter of the $726 million in developer fees that were to be set aside for regional road improvements in the western end of the county over the next five years, according to a study presented to the Riverside County Transportation Commission on Wednesday.

“It’s quite disturbing,” said county Supervisor Bob Buster, who is also a commissioner. “There have to be some consequences for those choices [to waive fees].”

But a handful of city leaders contested the report’s findings, saying that in some cases developers received waivers only after agreeing to build or improve roads.

“It makes others look at us as if we’re cheating,” said Calimesa Councilman John Chlebnik, who also serves on the commission.

Nineteen members on the 30-seat commission voted to receive and file the report, while representatives from Calimesa, Banning, Beaumont and Canyon Lake voted against it, largely calling the report off-base. Other members were absent or abstained.

The commission funded the study to project revenue that would be raised by the Transportation Uniform Mitigation Fee, a program that requires developers to pay for traffic-flow improvements if they wish to build in western Riverside County. Since July 2003, developers have been required to pay $6,650 per house, and, since July of this year, pay 48 cents to $2.60 per square foot of industrial, office and retail development.

The fees are split between the county transportation commission and the Western Riverside Council of Governments, with a sliver going to a transit agency. More than $44 million has been raised.

In September, the commission approved the first major awards, funding mostly design and planning work for 23 projects with $71 million over five years, including widening Cajalco Road and turning Ramona Expressway into an east-west thoroughfare.

The commission and the council of governments initiated the $50,000 study, conducted by Newport Beach consulting firms David Taussig & Associates and the Concord Group, to take a comprehensive look at all planned development and project the revenue from developer fees.

The study found that, in the western part of the county through mid-2009, permission is expected for the building of 85,329 single-family homes, 14,407 multifamily homes, 6.4 million square feet of retail space, 1.2 million square feet of office space and 12.9 million square feet of industrial space.

All of this construction should mean that developers would pay more than $726 million to ease regional gridlock. But the study found that cities and the county waived $180 million of that.

The area covered by the fee is divided into fives zones. Zone 2 -- which includes Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore and Canyon Lake -- has the greatest amount in fee exemptions: about $78 million of the nearly $237 million it was projected to bring in. Zone 5 -- which includes Banning, Beaumont and Calimesa -- has the highest exemption percentage: More than half of the nearly $81 million that was projected to raise has been waived, according to the study.

Some cities’ officials said the information in the study is inaccurate and fails to reflect work that developers had done in place of paying the fees.

“It’s a poorly done report and a waste of money,” said Beaumont Councilman Roger Berg, also a transportation commissioner. “I don’t think you can get anything out of it.”

But consultant David Taussig noted that the study was based solely on data provided by the cities and the county.

Buster added that although some developers did regional roadwork in place of paying the fees, others might have been exempted for political reasons or the fee was not collected by local governments.

Also, he said, some developers are funding projects strictly within cities.

“This program is supposed to be a regional road program,” he said. “If every city wanted to keep all of its development impact fees for roads within its borders, we wouldn’t be able to have coordinated regional programs that deal with roads on a priority basis.”