The San Benito County Board of Supervisors approved $17,500
Tuesday to fund a traffic impact fee study in an effort to prepare
the county for future growth and road construction.
Hollister – The San Benito County Board of Supervisors approved $17,500 Tuesday to fund a traffic impact fee study in an effort to prepare the county for future growth and road construction.
The study will determine how much traffic impact fees should be and how to use those fees over the next several years, Supervisor Pat Loe said Tuesday.
“We need the information in order to justify increasing the fees,” she said. “And even to justify the fees we are charging now.”
Traffic impact fees are collected with building permits and used to pay for new road construction. The county has a traffic impact fee fund of about $7 million, but the majority of that money is already slated to be used for the Highway 25 bypass and other safety improvements on the highway, COG Transportation Planner Mary Dinkuhn told supervisors Tuesday.
New fees collected will be used to mitigate the costs of new roads, Loe said.
The county charges builders $17,893 in traffic impact fees for a single family residential home, but that amount could increase depending on the results of the study, said planner Byron Tuner. And when fees increase, home buyers feel the pinch.
“Any time permits get more expensive you can bet that those costs will be passed on to home buyers,” Turner said. “If it’s more expensive for the builder, it will be more expensive for the buyer.”
Once the study is completed, the fees will need approval from the Board of Supervisors before they are implemented, Loe said.
How much the fees could be raised will not be known until the study is complete, she said.
