Public Works Committee stalls on SDC update
By William Lundquist
Argus Observer
Monday, October 29, 2007 12:18 PM PDT
Ontario - Debate on whether the Ontario Public Works Committee is working on one or two documents to pass on to the Ontario City Council in its recommendation for a new system development charge (SDC) ordinance, and confusion over what was decided in past meetings, resulted in the committee adjourning until Nov. 16 without having decided much Friday.
Still, committee chairman Riley Hill said, “I have a sense we will get this done in the next three or four meetings. The project list needs to be updated, and we need to get the minutes of meetings to refresh our memories.”
Ontario Public Works Director Steve Gaschler was not at Friday’s meeting but provided committee members with project lists of transportation capital improvements, water and sewer improvement projects and parks and recreation facilities projects.
Gaschler also responded to the controversy of the committee’s last meeting by providing committee members with documentation that they had indeed received SDC information from the Ontario Parks and Recreation Committee Dec. 3, Jan. 18 and March 19.
Committee members on Friday, however, found several proposed transportation capital improvements that had already been canceled, and said the list needs to be updated to give them the accurate totals they need to set SDC rates for developers. They also said the information from the Parks and Recreation Committee was projected out to 2040, but the committee had decided to project numbers only 10 years in the future in its calculations.
Hill said the city’s utility capitalization fee (UCF) remains in place and may continue to remain regardless of the implementation of SDCs because the $2.5 million in the UCF fund is not enough to cover the more than $3 million in water and sewer projects on the list. The big debate Friday, however, was not about numbers, but where they should go. Hill said when the city’s project list is revised, those revisions ought to be included in the city’s SDC methodology report and rate study, with that document serving as the basis for setting SDC rates on new development.
“My understanding is it (the document) is supposed to be revisited every year,” Hill said.
He said that was what the committee thought it was submitting to the City Council.
City Councilman Dan Cummings, however, said the methodology document should be left alone, with project list revisions being noted on simple fee resolutions that could be changed at any time. He said that is what the City Council thought it was accepting from the committee.
Committee member Scott Wilson said he liked Cummings’ approach but wanted to make sure a process was developed to move projects between the methodology document and the fee resolutions. Member Tom Frazier said that sounded like the hybrid approach to methodology that the committee had already rejected.
In the city’s SDC methodology report and rate study, last revised June 29, 2006, three basic approaches were described as ways to develop SDC rates: the standards driven approach, the improvements driven approach and a hybrid combination of the two.
In the standards driven approach, the facilities needed to serve growth are determined by applying level of service standards for facilities to projected future population growth and employment. The approach works best where current and planned levels of service have been identified but no specific list of projects is available. Ontario, however, has such lists.
In the improvements driven approach, a portion of each planned project that is attributable to growth is determined, and the SDC-eligible costs are calculated by dividing the total costs of those projects by the projected increase in population and employment. The approach works best where a detailed master plan or project list is available and the benefits of projects can be readily apportioned between growth and current users, which is why the committee chose the approach.
The hybrid approach combines elements of both and works best where levels of service have been identified and the benefits of individual projects are not easily apportioned between growth and current users. Wilson said the committee had been moving closer to the hybrid approach as it learned more. Frazier said the committee’s methodology should be based on the city’s master plan and the projects list included in the methodology document, which basically is the improvements driven approach.
“You’re saying it has to be one document,” Cummings said.
That remains to be decided, however, at a future meeting.
