Tracy Press
Developers in the county will have to pay a fee for roads and mass transit if they build homes and businesses in the future.
On Tuesday, Tracy became one of several cities in the county to adopt such a fee, which has been pushed by the San Joaquin Council of Governments since 1991. The statute will go into effect in March.
Money the fee generates will be spent for roads, highways and other transportation projects in the county, including public transit.
In Tracy, areas now under development will not be subject to the fees. Future development, on the other hand, will be charged, said Bill Reeds, director of Development and Engineering Services.
Tracy roads that could benefit from the adopted fees are named in a regional traffic plan and include Corral Hollow, Lammers, Grant Line and Chrisman roads. Roadways outside of Tracy, including Interstate 5, Highway 120 and Interstate 205, could also benefit, said SJCOG Executive Director Andrew Chesley.
Residential developers will be charged a one-time fee of $2,500 per home or $1,500 per apartment or condominium.
Commercial and industrial developers will be charged $1.25 and $0.25 per square foot, respectively.
Although the fees directly affect developers, home buyers may also feel a pinch in the long run, said Tony Souza, president and chief executive officer of Souza Realty Inc.
That’s because the fees will be included in other development costs, which are used by builders to set price rates for homes.
“That means tacking on fees ultimately tacks on the price of a home for a home buyer,” Souza said.
The fees are necessary, however, since every home or business that is built does have transportation impact, Souza said.
“There’s no question that transportation is an issue, and we have to do what we can to make transportation better,” Souza added.
The idea of charging developers such fees has been discussed in the county since 1991, though little has been done until recently.
The fee was originally part of Measure K, a half-cent sales tax that brings in $36.75 million annually for roads and public transit.
Language in Measure K suggested that within three years of its 1991 passage, local governments should vote to institute a developers’ fee for transportation.
However, the measure included nothing that mandated such action, and it imposed no consequences if governments failed to pass the charge.
Now, if city councils and the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors fail to pass the fee, the effort to renew Measure K will die before it gets onto next November’s ballot. The fee was written into the wording of Measure K and was supposed to have been passed by 1994, three years after Measure K took effect.
But the fee never came. Unless it’s implemented, any renewal efforts for a new Measure K will be considered illegitimate, say county officials.
Chesley said one reason it took so long to initiate the fee was the economic slump in the development industry in the early 1990s.
Disagreements about the size of the fee and its implementation were never settled, Mayor Dan Bilbrey said.
Reeds said 12,900 homes have been built in Tracy since 1991, as have millions of square feet of retail and office space and warehouses.
A $2,500 per-home fee put in place then would have generated more than $31 million by now.
“This was a missed opportunity for additional transportation dollars to be generated because of the lack of fee structure in place,” Mayor Dan Bilbrey said.
However, no county or city officials would estimate how much money the fee might have generated if it had been initiated in earlier years.
“We’ve gotten to the place where we have the fee in place right now,” Chesley said.
Cities around the county will decide on the fee this week, while others will consider it as late as January.
Tracy, Manteca, Lathrop and Escalon have already approved the plan.
A countywide fee will go into effect even if a few cities vote against it, but Chesley anticipates all will pass the measure.