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ROUGH EDITED COPY
FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION
VALUE CAPTURE STRATEGIES:
DEVELOPER IMPACT FEES AND OTHER FEEBASED DEVELOPMENT CHARGES
THE PRIMER
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2023
JOB NO. 21705
CART CAPTIONING*PROVIDED BY:
LINDA M. FROST
on behalf of
MIDATLANTIC INTERPRETING GROUP, INC.
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This transcript is being provided in roughdraft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. Due to the nature of a live event, terms or names that were not provided prior to the assignment will be spelled phonetically and may or may not represent the true spelling.
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>> OPERATOR: Like, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Value Capture Strategies conference call. At this time al l participants are listen only mode. I will now turn it over to our host, Jen Shelby.
>> JENNIFER SHELBY: Good morning, or good after depending where you're joining us from. On behalf of the Federal Highway Administration, I would like to welcome everyone on today's webinar on developer impact fees and other fee based development charges. By name is Jen Shelby, with the Volpe center in Massachusetts and I'll moderate the webinar. Our webinar is running until 3:00 p.m. eastern time. We are recording the event and that recording will be posted to the Federal Highways Website. The speaker’s presentation slides will be available for download toward the end of the webinar. If you're interested in credits for today's web, we'll provide information at the end how to obtain confirmation of your attendance.
I will now give you a quick orientation to the webinar room.
In the top left corner of the screen you will find the all Your calling information if you prefer to listen to the webinar by phone instead of computer speakers. In the lower left corner, there's a chat window you can use to submit questions or comments Doug the webinar. We will field questions during the presentation and we'll have time at the very end of the webinar.
If we don't have time to address all of the questions, we will post written responses along with the webinar recording to the FHWA value capture Website. If you decide to use your phone to listen to today's event you will also be able to ask questions by phone. We will remind you about that at the appropriate time otherwise type your questions in the chat window.
If you use closed captioning for today's event. Click the CC icon at the bar and select show captions from the dropdown menu. All right. And now, we will move to some polls. Before we begin, I want to ask the audience to fill out these poll questions. And these are simply just to help us understand your affiliation and level of knowledge about the topics that we're going to move through today. While you're answering the questions I'll introduce you to Pepper Santalucia, a colleague of mine at the Volpe center in Massachusetts. Pepper what is the reaction of some of these polls?
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Looks like the results are starting to stabilize a little bit. We have, once again, a better representation from MPOs and local governments than we have gotten in previous webinar, and a few transits agency representative, so, we're glad to see that. As with past webinar, if folks who are listening today, have heard or knows a little bit about the topic, but not too many that counted themselves as very knowledgeable, it makes sense, you know enough to be interested in attending today, and you hope we'll have a much stronger knowledge base by the time we're done today.
So, thank you for responding to those questions.
I'm going to go ahead and introduce our first presenter. Dr.Rafael Aldrete is Texas a.m. University systems regions fellow. Rafael has two decades of experience in management consulting, collaborates with local, state, national and Federal agencies. His research interests revolve around infrastructure finance and economics, focusing on public private partnerships and value capture Dr.Aldrete authored many resources for financing and funding. And those resources were developed for Texas DOT. He holds Ph.D. and Master of Science degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Rafael, please go ahead.
>> RAFAEL ALDRETE: Thank you, Pepper. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, depending on where you are. I'm going to provide an introduction to develop impact fees. And other development charge, and my presentation is going to try to accomplish two things: One is providing an outline what the Federal Highway Administration coin tans which is a manual that you have access to, that will be posted in the chat box later on. And secondly, this presentation is going to try to set the stage for the next two presenters, with practitioners covering the impact fee examples from their communities.
The presentation is divided into six sections, and they mirrored the contents of the impact fee primer. I'll start with an overview of the impact fees and follow with discussion on efficiency and equity concerns.
We'll talk about a bit history of the legal basis. We'll look at some key elements of structuring an impact fee. And we'll move on to the implementation process and steps in the implementation process briefly, and the presentation concludes with the case example of transportation specific impact fees.
In the interest of time, and since we have two excellent case study presentations after me, I will not cover the primer case study. However, you'll find it in the webinar slides in the primer, where it is described in detail. It is a good reference if you want to get into the impact fees.
Impact fees are onetime upfront cash payment made by a developer in connection with a local government's approval of a new development product. The fee covers all or part of the cost of a public facility needs located outside of the project boundaries, but that benefit the project. This includes, for example, floats water, utilities, and police, fire emergency services. Impact fees were originally intended for capital expenditures only, and the use expanded over time to include operating maintenance and administrative expenses.
So, how are they different from other funding sources? Impact fees are a way to generate revenue to the various services, including transportation, water, affordable housing, that are related to new development projects.
So, compared to the informal system of negotiated exceptions with developer, impact fees provide more production act to the development process and generate more revenues. Impact fees can be directly fide to the local planning process which helps achieve the community planning objectives. Additionally, impact fees provide capacity, which means they provide capacity, whether or not those who pay actually use the capacity at any given point in time. Impact fees can be structured in a way that new developments can buy into existing infrastructure capacity which also allows local governments to recoup prior public investments. However, impact fees represent a onetime payment which makes them less secure under the revenue generated by special assessment districts and is less suitable to secure that. Furthermore, impact fees are best suited for incremental investments that leverage already existing infrastructure, which means in developments where you can apply marginal cost pricing. And I'll get into that in a little bit more later. Now we want to discuss the efficiency and equity concerns.
So, when we are trying to evaluate the impact fees are efficient, funding efficiencies, that we also refer to as, horizontal equity, we base it on the user paid principle. So, this entails evaluating three key aspects of consideration. The first is whether the Ref views cover the costs involved in providing public facility needs. Second is proportionality, or horizontal levity. That's basically whether the cost can be in usage of the facility and the third is marginal cost. Whether they can be provided with the least cost basis on incremental basis. This is very important, as I'll describe subsequently.
So, how do impact fees, or how can we address efficiency concerns with impact fees? When new developments built, the acquired infrastructure that exceeds the revenues from the impact fees. So, when you negotiate impact fees on a project-by-project basis, it can be unpredictable, and it is also more vulnerable to legal challenges. On the other hand, when impact fees are related into local ordinances, they can guide future development. By law, impact fees cannot charge new developments more than the fair share of the cost of the public facility needs and this, in turn helps impact fees of legal challenges better than value captured techniques.
At the same time impact fees favor existing developments over the newer developments that we have to pay. The fees.
So, the idea behind impact fees is that the new development should pay for the marginal cost of the facility needs to accommodate the growth they will generate. Marginal pricing means certain areas may be more expensive to serve, not only development areas that are closer to the urban core, to existing infrastructure. So, by using marginal pricing, impact fees can also help prevent urban sprawl patterns that keep the land closer to the urban area.
So, now, how do impact fees or how do we address equity concern was impact fees? Evaluating the social or vertical equity concerns is based on the ability to pay principle, where publish facilities are paid by only those who are able and who can afford to pay. On the impact fees, fertile inequities can occur in two respects: The first is proper prices resulting from impact fees can create gentrification in certain areas that in turn buys out low income property buyers. And second when you have a flat impact fee structure, that doesn't take into consideration the ability to pay factor. That's when you generate some of these equity concerns.
So, how are they commonly addressed? Well, first let's talk a little bit gentrification. Impact fees generally raise prices of existing and new properties and in turn make them less affordable, especially for lower income households. When you have a competitive real estate market, developers pass on the cost of the fee to the property which exacerbate this situation further.
So, as a remedy, local jurisdictions often set up waivers, deferments and other financial incentives to address inequity concerns.
On the other hand, the problems with the flat fee structure can be fixed with a more lay approach, when you have an impact fee which varies by land use or building type or size of the building, by the density, the locations of the development or configuration of the development, for example mixed use versus single use development.
Well, at the end it is about the basic tables and striking the right balance that come was simplicity and more complex fee structure that can be administratively challenging.
Now I'll talk a little bit about history of impact fees.
So, impact fees have been legally challenged since the 1920s however there are three important Supreme Court rulings that established the legal basis for the fees. The first is Nolan versus California coastal commission in 1987 and Dolan versus City of Tigard in 1994 and most reasonably Koontz vs. St.John river in 2013. Before the decision they used priced authority. However, the cases regarded limits on the property while ensuring they pay only their fair share of the public improvements the Nollan ruling said there should be a essential relationship known as essential nexus test between the project and collecting impact fees.
Dolan ruling on the other hand, established that the construction should be proportional as the property. Which is known as rough proportionality test. In order to pass this test. The nexus study or fee study to demonstrate they meet legal basis in a quantitative way the Koontz case had a more lenient relationship test.
As I was saying the Koontz ruling allows this more flexible relationship test. When impact fees are set up programmatically, to all developments and all developers. This is done by ordinance. However, if the developers when they are charged a very specific fee in cases where there is no existing ordinance for impact fees, there is not an impact fee problem, when they challenged the fees, then the public agency needs to meet the Nolan/Dolan test. Legally he on the other hand when impact fees legislated by ordinance, the burden of proof on the legitimacy of the fees was on the private developers. However, if you have the other an example, when the fees are challenged, when they have been they are very specific, and have been adjudicated with no local ordinance, then the burden of proof fall on the local agency. So, that's two important restrictions.
In this case, you see it's a fine line of legislation, and some of the landmark rulings that we have for legal fees. But basically, in the 1970s, they used new fees to make up for shortages or property tax limits. So in 1987Nolln passed impact recalls, in 1987, and California and Johnson & Johnson in 1989.
Aced today they have impact fee laws at the state level that affect the local agency's ability to collect fees for new development.
So, these impact fee policies have changed over time, and this has been based on Court cases, as we saw, and also in based on local jurisdictions and so forth to generate fund for new development. So, this resulted in each state having a different experience when it comes to their impact fee laws.
So, for example, California and Florida, the highest users of they have the highest number of impact fees, and California was adopted legislation while Florida adopted late 20006. Actually, Florida has higher number of impact fees than California.
Next, the legislation in Texas was passed in 1987. It was very detailed and restrictive which made it difficult to use. It was amended in 2014 to add more flexibility. And on the other hand we have different states focusing on different types of fees. Some of them focus on transportation impact fees. Others focus on housing. I know there's wastewater only for example.
At the local level, there are numerous guidelines available to support developing a legally defensible impact fee product. So, local fee local impact ordinances, provide different uses of impact fees, including whether it is used specifically for infrastructure categories or capital only or maintenance and administration. The table on the slide has examples. You have San Francisco with well established impact fee which generates 250 million in annual revenue. On the other hand, California also, you have Los Angeles and Oakland which only recently began implementing impact fees and limit the use between one and two infrastructure such as affordable housing.
Moving to the East Coast, in Broward County, Florida. They capitalized on the legislation of impact fee, and they established authority of municipals, based on the land use development code at the County level. So, this illustrates a little the wide diversity of impact fees examples at local level.
Now, I'll move op to talk a little more about nexus and fee structuring. Nexus studies and fee structuring. Nexus studies are conducted to ensure the impact fees charged for new developments are legally defensible and they meet the nexus and proportionality standards of the Nollan and Dolan decisions.
The study uses fee schedules for different land use categories to provide the maximum legally defensible fee ceilings, and this is important, the ceiling only. That's what the studies provide. So, publication agencies set fees below these ceilings to avoid dampening a new development. Ultimately the decision on the sea level is different on the funding based on infrastructure needs and also on the potential effects on developing the facility. However, due to financial or technical resource constraints, a lot of public agencies do not fully account for the impacts that fees may have on new developments that may result in dampening development activity. You don't want them to be too high, that they'll dampen development.
So, the way in which public agency structure impact fees, the proportionality. While those help to incentivize, the developments that are most consistent with the overall land use and planning goals of municipal. So, Bradley speaking defining the fee structure has four steps. The first one is defining the service area for the fees. The second is, establish the level of service standards. The third is developing the standard fee schedules or the different fee types and amounts. And four, setting the appropriate timing of fee payments.
When deciding let’s talk first about service area. When deciding on service area for impact fees it's important to strike a balance between having enough area to generate specific revenue, and not having so many that there aren't enough fund. Having one service area may seem like the simplest option but geographic and specific impact fees can more accurately account for infrastructure costs and prior impacts in different areas of municipal.
So, when thinking about this, then you can have service areas that are based on factors that include, for example, the extent or availability of existing infrastructure, proximity to transit facilities or availability of additional funding sources that help remove the relines on impact fees.
In terms of developing or determining the level of service standards for new development, this is very important. Local agencies have the authority to set these standards according to the state statutes on impact fees, or the or local ordinances, say, it is common practice to adopt the same level of standards, for entire jurisdiction. It is not always necessary. Delivering constraints that the particular municipal may face along with local growth and land use policies can provide a valid reap for having or setting different valuable level of service standards for different areas of the municipal.
So, now, when setting standard fees, standard fee schedules are based on the level of service that we discussed in each area. Different schedules are established for each specific category which prefer to initiate based on land use and instruction type. For example, impact fees for are based on square foot basis for offices of retail and industrial facilities. In order to reduce the impact, some agencies have developed interjurisdictional impact fees, which help mitigate efforts and allow the less resource localities take advantage of impact fee for their own infrastructure funding. It helps implement capacity, to implement fees.
The timing of fee payments is also a very important consideration when you structure an impact fee, and that's because there may be a significant lag between when the project is approved, and the actual development takes place. So, the timing of the fee assessment, versus collection is critical for the developers. Fees can be accessioned and collected simultaneously, such as when the building permit of the final inspection happens, so early on or at the end of the construction, or at different stages.
But, developers typically prefer, an early fee assessment so they know the amount they have to pay. At the same time they want to delay the payment until the property sells or to generate revenue to minimize their cost.
So, timing is very important. We'll talk briefly about implementation steps. Implementation typically includes nine steps. So, you see them on the screen. We can divide them into kind of two phases. The first include the first six, which includes establishing the impact fee goals and objectives. The next is establish fee payment and amount. Third is incorporate fees into capital improvement and linking them directly, the fourth is conducting public hearings, and related procedure, preparing the staff report which is maybe very important in cases where there may be legal challenges down the line. Having a staff report is very important, as it contains technical information that may not be reflected in the nexus study, and the sixth one, the last step in this first phase is drafting the impact fjord Nance and adopting it.
Once the impact fee has been interrupted there are three important steps in the second phase, the first of which is the annual accounting of fees collected. The review of the impact, sort of capital improvement plan, which is very important to keep it up to date, and justify the use of impact fee, and audits. The collection of and administration. Of course, and he you also need to account for dealing with fee challenges that may take place.
But, the one key implementation challenge with impact fees is transparency, and this is because the developers often find it difficult to estimate the total charges, because there are many other development charges that may take place outside impact, fees, there may be lack of transparency how they are calculated. The local agency may also have difficulty in assessing to what extent the impact fees reasonable. And, finally, the developer may find it difficult to assess because they don't have fee amounts and they may decide to take the project elsewhere.
So, making impact fees transparent is important to ensure transparency. They can make them available. Provide nexus studies to explain how the fees were calculated, establishing annual reports that account for fees that have already been collected, implemented. Some jurisdictions have taken steps to improve transparency and posting nexus studies on the Website, and comprehensive information and master fee study that's up to date and maintaining guidance. However, there's lack of transparency due to lack of resources and coordination on department, different departments that may be dealing with different impact fees. So, these issues, the capacity in this case, human resource, or technical capacities, some municipalities hire firms to study neighboring jurisdictions which helps save cost and ensure analytical vigor to help set the proper fee levels based on available resources. It's important to have optimal fee levels that will not be too high as to dampen development.
The next is the case example which I won't cover, so I'm going to jump to my concluding slide. Basically, I would like to end with two main takeaways on impact fees. First like other value capture techniques impact fees can fund offsight improvements to benefit the community and promote local growth.
Second, impact fees can be provided programmatically, which makes them a legitimate source of funding for the planning process. Those are the two main takeaways.
And this concludes my presentation, Pepper.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Thank you very much. Rafael. Operator, we would like to open the phone lines for questions.
>> OPERATOR: Questions from the phone press one then zero on the telephone keypad. If you have a question on the phone press 1 followed by zero.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. Great. Rafael there was one question that came in during the presentation that may be more detailed than you can answer on the spot. But it was a question, can you speak to how impact fees are Levied in Los Angeles for affordable housing. Are they Levied on affordable housing or on all projects to support affordable housing.
>> RAFAEL ALDRETE: They are on projects to support affordable housing projects. I think we have more detail on them, probably not enough, but they include some good references in the primer.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: In general, the idea would not be to Levy you're Levies wide base of revenue 0 to generate affordable housing.
>> RAFAEL ALDRETE: That's correct.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: There was another comment about our phone line, if we can put the phone number up there for the audience, we will correct it as soon as we can. We're checking on that. There are a couple other people posting questions in the chat. I think we'll hold those oh, let's hold those, and we'll get to them close to the end of the webinar,
Jen, if you can pull up the next slide deck, I'll introduce our next preventer, Vik Bhide is the Director of mobility department for the City of Tampa, Florida. Vik has over 20 years of research consulting and local government experience in mobility. As Director of mobility department his duties include oversight of the city's transportation, parking and stormwater portfolios, he also leads the city's intersection of innovation program which assists local startups and doing business with city government. Vik last serves as board member for ITS, Florida and board member for the museum of industry.
Vik worked on behalf of the City of Tampa to partner with Florida DOT and University of south Florida urban transportation and research to form the Tampa bay smart cities alliance. Public private academic alliance, pilot and grow transportation technology initiative.
Vik, the floor is yours.
>> VIK BHIDE: Thank you, Pepper. And good afternoon. My presentation is going to be from a civil perspective, the City of Tampa specifically, and we'll look at the history of impact fees from a regulatory context. Of the timeline in Florida, specifically in Tampa, what the current fee structure is, what our context is, what are the things that we funded with our current structure, and then what's next. I mean, what are we looking at in terms of trends, and some interesting application of our sidewalk in lieu fund which we do not call impact fee.
So, with that, let's jump right in. And this is a good follow-up to Dr.Aldrete's conversation. He really set the footprint on this. It's really these two cases. Golden versus Ramapo, and the construction industry association of Sonoma County versus the City of Petaluma. These two cases set a lot of jurisdiction in the state of Florida and they basically created the pathway that we the comprehensive plan and capital improvement plan relative to development.
I won't belabor this, because Dr.Aldrete really got into the definition of impact fees and rational nexus, and I'll just say that in Florida, we have the comprehensive plan that lays out objectives and our capital improvement plan along with mobility strategy, whatever that document may be, and we'll look into that, is what informs our approach to growth we also have the concept of transportation concurrency, so, as part of the growth management act of 1985 in Florida, it requires the public facilities to be provided concerned with the impact of new development. That new development is really important, because it kind of speaks to the limitations of concurrency, which is they don't always support infill or urban projects with adjacent constrained roadways, which, for a city like Tampa, which is urbanized mostly built out decades ago, becomes really challenging, as the center of the five County region.
We also have the transportation concurrency exemption area, also established by the state. These exemption areas were established where infilling redevelopment were encouraged, so, Tampa becomes a prime example. The city established our own concurrency exception area in 1998 as part of the swamp land and pretty much covered the entire City of Tampa, as you can see in the map. And you also have your future land use maps relative to our come swamp land shown here.
A quick time line of the impact fees in Florida in general, the growth management act in 1985 requires local governments to identify sources of funding for capital improvements. So, in essence, develop the CIP and identify sources of funding.
In '98, the TCEA exception areas, were defined, relative to density, and 2011, the state eliminated concurrency, and making it optional for local government to implement, and 2013, an update to the community planning act allowed local governments to adopt alternative mobility funding systems, or mobility fees. This came in really handy.
And then in '21, there was a little preemption with House Bill 337, which restricted increases in road impact fees or mobility fees to once every four years and capped that increase to 50 percent.
That really has not impacted us historically as much, because we have not updated our impact fee since 1989. And, of course, we're in that process right now, and we'll look at that as well in a second
So, again, a quick history of the mobility fee concept concurrency, of course, fell short, and addressing congestion, especially in concept. And in 2009 through 2016 we had many jurisdictions in Florida that adopted mobility programs.
Tampa's timeline starts in '86 following the Road Management Act where we implemented the transportation impact fee as defined in six districts. In '98, the city adopted the transportation and currency exemption areas. In 2002, the first of several no transportation impact fee zones were created in east Tampa and Ybor City and additional ones were added in 2020 as well.
A quick note on the no transportation impact zones and Dr.Aldrete spoke been that as remedy to invite development. Over the last two decades, at least two decades, we've seen mixed application of that incentive, if you will, or remedy, if you will, in that we have not really seen significant development being attracted to areas, because of the no transportation impact fees. But we have seen development that correlates more with proximity to the urban core, and in Tampa, we have two CBDs more or less, we have downtown area and west shore area close to the airport, and everything, between those two areas, which is our core zone, that's where any transportation impact zone, or free zone that is closer it has seen more development.
Fee types: We have impact fees that impact roadways only, and multi modal fees or mobility fees, which the state allows, that can consider the roadway, as well as transit, pedestrian, bicycle, so, multi modal in essence. I have to mention that even though the mobility fee does cover multi modal considerations, the assessment or calculus is based on roadway of level of service today. So, we're kind of looking at other ways to calculate that impact, and we'll look at that in a second.
Here are the different places in Florida where mobility fees are used. Most of them are more urbanized, rapidly growing areas, so, south Florida, Tampa, Hillsborough County, Sarasota, Orlando, Gainesville, and Jacksonville.
So, the fee go was, you know, relative to impact. In essence, supervise needed facilities for the new development, encourage mixed use and infills, again you meet the urban challenge, as far as we're concerned, and provide a wide variety of capital improvement.
And, in our case, that includes multi modal considerations that are established in our mobility plan and provide transparency and certainty. Dr.Aldrete mentioned this. This continues to be a challenge, because not very well understood, especially for new developers that come into the state and do business, but that is a goal.
So, our current fee structure is applied across 51 different land use categories, and six impact fee districts. The fee calculous is based on person miles travel and trip rates. We have a no fee zone as mentioned set by City Council, which mixed results.
So, in essence, the impact fee is a function of the demand in cost considerations, less the credit. And the credit could be a function of gas tax usage, tag license fees, or any offsetting costs like dedication of land or right-of-way.
Putting it all together through our context. We have the comprehensive plan that establishes high level consideration. The move we'll look at that mobility plan which sets forth strategies and priorities that we want to accomplish, relative to various challenges. And then that goes into the city code, specifically chapters 25 and 27 where this is excused.
Our objective is set forth in 1.1 itself, and in essence, it is to provide adequate delivery of multi modal transportation system options. So, we put that out there and made it multi modal from the get-go. Our MOVES plan is for mobility, opportunity vision, equity, and safety, sets forth what we're looking at, safety, equity, economic opportunity and health sustainability and resilience, and finally affordability, which really lends more to transit and walk/bike transportation. And having this clearly defined and correlated to the comprehensive plan, before you establish your capital improvement program, we find it very helpful for both mitigating any kind of challenges, but also making our objective to the development community very clear.
This is another way to visualize it. Comp plan, mobility plan, transportation tech manual, which we're get nothing the code, procedures manual.
And the process, in essence, and, again, Dr.Aldrete covered this in detail, but determine if the project is exempt or not. If not, determine the level of effort, condition, analyze what will change with the project, and identify the mitigation.
Relative to the buildout condition.
Here's some examples of what the city funded using impact fees, or mobility fees. 46th street in the plaza, was a relatively high speed roadway, 40 mile per hour speed. Minimal walkability, narrow sidewalks and not very friendly for a bike, scooter, et cetera. With construction, of course, we reduced roadway speed, added multi modal facilities and wider sidewalks to improve walkability.
Similar examples in Harbor Island south of downtown Tampa. Raised crosswalk, landscape medians, bike lanes and lower speed limits. Again, move towards that multi-modality.
Emerging trends relative to the mobility fee, as I mentioned, currently, we use roadway level of service, which is limited in its application, because it really wanted to subjective measure. The other speaks to the comfort of more or less one mode of travel on one type of facility. So, we're moving from roadway level of service to developing mobility fee based on quality-of-service standard that look at multi-modality from the measure itself, and also look at land use context. And person trips, rather than just the level of service or driver comfort.
Other trends, I mean, over the next by 2045, we're looking at 250,000 new jobs and 100,000 new residents in Tampa. We're growing rapidly. Real estate costs going up significantly, as are transportation costs in fact, we're one of the most expensive transportation markets in the nation, relative to our median, our median household transportation cost is almost 21 percent.
Again, not a surprise we're very car dependent, very underinvested in transit, that's where we're assessing how our mobility fee can actually help out. All of this while local option gas tax or gas taxes were decreasing. We know that.
And I mentioned high growth. So, in a very short time this, is south downtown right by the arena. We went from this to this. And this is just one phase of three phases of one major development which is Water Street. We have two others like these going on, in Ybor City west of the river. So, significant infill development, significant intensity at every level. This is just a downtown scale. This is happening in our residential neighborhoods as well.
So, again, since we have not increased that mobility fee since 1989, and we're looking at different applications, we've now initiated a study to do so. Related example of our sidewalk in lieu fee. A couple of years back, we made a very simple, in essence, change to the sidewalk, which is primarily a single family, or up to double housing type of development. And, in essence, we took away all of the loophole, and simplified it to if you're bidding a home, you're building a sidewalk, or paying an in lieu fund with no exceptions. That's yielded some really good results, we're parsing the data, but over the last couple of years, we've added maybe like two and a quarter mile of sidewalk already, which is great. Which is great. When we look at GIS and sidewalk gap we have over 1200 miles of sidewalk. If we wanted a sidewalk on both sides of the street, on every street in Tampa. Our per linear foot fee is still low, it's $29. Our actual cost is more like $76 the cost to the city. This fee is set by resolution by town, that's our next step, the in lieu fee is update the fee and bring it up to a more realistic level and rather than having it set by resolution, have work with council and policy makers to see if we have some sort of rational increment to it relative to our costs. Again, that's being worked out.
And then some of our next steps, like I mentioned finalizing the mobility plan, the more clarity we have there in terms of our objectives. The better outcomes we see. We're also updating the comprehensive plan to reflect priorities in the plan to bring everything in alignment and we initiated a study to review our current fee structure and the different land uses.
So, with that, I'll be happy to take any questions.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Thank you, Vik, for that presentation. We have do have a couple questions for you, before we turn it our third presenter. One is the City of Tampa use fund for maintenance after the upgraded infrastructure is installed.
>> VIK BHIDE: We do not. We only use the fee currently for capital improvements.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. There's a followup transit question here from Don. We show multi modal going to transit. Is that just capital projects and what are examples of those types of projects?
>> VIK BHIDE: Sure they are capital projects and used for bus shelters and bus stops only. Again on a very limited basis, primarily, because we're among the lowest funded per capita transit in the nation relative to our metro area site. So, we don't have a lot of transit service, so we don't get an opportunity but that is one of the things we will be reviewing as part of our fee study is can we apply it to operations as well, and how can we apply it to operation.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. Great. There was an earlier question from Jonathan talking about transit, too. So I think he did address his question as to wetter O&M is appropriate for those feeds. You said no, is that correct?
>> VIK BHIDE: That's correct. Today we don't use fees he like O&M and mobility feeds, I can share an existing example, that's related but slightly different. We use parking fees to increase streetcar fees to O&M, that's how we increased it to 15 minutes recently.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Great. Lastly there was more of a comment than a question. From Joseph, so we cannot have developers setting time frames and cost. The authority must have total control. If the developer wants to go elsewhere, so be it. I don't know if you can comment on that, Vik, based on your experience in Tampa?
>> VIK BHIDE: I don't disagree with that at all. I mean, we do set the fees ultimately which is what we're working toward. It has to be an ongoing conversation, the community, and in Florida, it means the builder's association. They hold a lot of sway. So, it is being sensitive to the market, as well as sensitive to our own context but we're not seeing developers shying away from the Tampa Bay Area for sure. Okay. Thank you for that. Not seeing any additional questions. Operator, I guess we should give a phone listeners a chance to ask questions if they want to.
>> OPERATOR: Once again, please press 1 followed by zero if you have a question. 1 followed by zero.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. We'll turn to our next presenter, Mr. Dale Keller, he is Director of engineering for the regional transportation commission in Washoe County located in Reno, Nevada. He has nor more than 16 years experience he working on design and management of interstate eggs press way and arterial projects.
Prior to joining the RTC, Dale worked for Nevada Department of Transportation where he was the project manager for project NOEN the largest public works project in Nevada history. Dale, please go ahead.
>> DALE KELLER: All right. Good morning from the West Coast. And finally a sunny day here in northern Nevada. What Pepper said, my name is Dale Keller Director of engineering at wash show County. RTC. We're located in Reno, Nevada we're close to San Francisco than we are Las Vegas. Today I'm here to present the Regional Road Impact Fee Program or what we call RRIF. The RTC serves City of Reno and City of Sparks east. And unincorporated of Washoe County. We have three functions that we do. We're metropolitan planning organization Washoe County. And anticipating long range transportation needs. We are also the engineering construction arm for the street and highway program and that include transit capital projects as well. So, not only does this agency fund all of the street and highway programs, but we also implement these projects on behalf of the local jurisdictions. So, we feel this kind of consolidation under one RTC roof, between planning, funding and engineering and construction, has some effectiveness, for the implementation of the transportation program here in the County.
Lastly, we are the operators of the public transportation system. So, the Regional Road Impact Fee Program here was established in 1995. We started collecting fees in February of 1996.
So, the group has done a good job outlining what impact fees, for us it's a funding tool for collecting the cost of new developments and capacity demands on the regional roadways. As an example, here, a new development comes online, the local agencies collect the fees through the building permit process and fund are then transferred to the RTC and RTC uses these funds to support capacity projects on our regional roads.
The program has advantages and limitations. Some advantages are, it's development's way to pay their share in our community's view of equitable system and has been supported by the community I'll touch upon that in a second here. It does have limitations. Fund are strictly used as capacity and impact fees cannot be used on maintenance expenses and noncapacity improvements I'll touch upon how we're Dee finding capacity in our region and how we are viewing capacity on our regional roads.
So, our program governed by these ordinances and state statue this is 27B which allows local governments to enact impact ordinances and to administer the program, each agency, City of Reno, City of Sparks Waugh show Washoe County. And I'll put in the chat RTCWashoe.com, establishing the methodology to establish the net cost per service unit as well as our general administrative manual, or GAM, outlines how these fees are administered.
So, we did a good job talking about how we develop our fee IP previously, and what is unique here, the RTC uses long-term transportation plan or RTP. We look 30 years out through the MPO, this captured all of the urbanized areas of Washoe County. We're responsible for improving the long range regional transportation plan as well as short range regional transportation improvement plan as well as other planning documents. This RRIF RTC uses, is included what is shown on the screen here the 2050RTP. That's how we write down that program and boil that down into our general administrative panel.
We talked about updates. Any time we update the long-term plan, then our whole TIP gets updated along with that. One can't happen without the other for the RRIF program.
One thing I want to talk about. I think Vik previously mentioned about buying from a development community. We have a RRIF technical advisory committee and the RRIF comprised of planning, development committee and staff from the agencies. We meet once a month to review the current program, where the dollars are being used and how we're administrating of project and talk about oneoffs. This is a great way to provide input and guidance throughout the program and talk about updates as well.
This is a basic diagram outlining the three steps how impact fees developed here. The first one is in red. TMRPA, Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency, responsible for land growth and use. With the known land youth assumptions to assess what types and where growth is planning to occur and green is where RTC planning comes into it with the regional transportation plan identifying the need of capacity improvements. And in blue talking through the RRIF program, the determination of new developments' share of the cost of these capacity improvements. And, finally, at the end of the flow chart here is the impact fee rates and fee schedule by individual development type.
So, to estimate the growth under a ten-year time period we use consensus forecast through population and employment through the planning agency development model and convert this growth into vehicle's mile travel or VMTs. VMTs are our standard measurement to create the link between supply which is roadway capacity and demand which is traffic generated by new development and this is just a depiction what that looks like. We have single family comes in. And more vehicles on the roadway, that's how we capture that standard measurement.
This general becomes aggregated and we assign all of these different population employment areas, and the parcels and zones into our travel demand model for the RRIF program. We only use the impacts on the regional road network shown there in orange on the left side. So, we negate local road trips as well as trips on the interstate system. We only capture the VMTs on our regional roads. Likewise, you see all of the different dots on the right side. That gets repeated over and over again. Results are aggregated to determine the average trip length for the north or self service area, and we'll talk about those in a second.
And so, these types of different TAZs which are traffic analyst zones, that are loaded on the street network, and this really helps us generate the need for additional VMTs over ten years. We know the growth of VMT's last part of equation is cost, and it determines the improvements or cost. RRIF uses the first ten years of the RTP as depicted. We break down as part of metropolitan planning, the first ten years of projects and you see on the left side, 2021 to 2025 projects, as well as right side of 2026 to 2030. I will point out, you see on the on each of the legends, yellow capacity, we have multi modal in blue. Our program, RRIF program, does incorporate, does account for using multi modal projects. The reason behind that, we talk about capacity, if it takes a trip off the roadway network and changing it from a vehicle trip to now a micro mode trip or pedestrian trip, we count that for a certain percentage of a capacity driven. So, developer, could be either could construct that, we'll touch about it later, or this is also incorporated as part of our CIP.
As mentioned, before we have to account for other funding opportunity types and this is really the unfunded need based off new development.
We did a good job. Talk about impact fees based on reasonable size area. Showing benefit of improvement to the rational nexus. Fees are corrected in two areas north and south, interstate 80 being the dividing line. We used to have three and some statutes require jurisdictional boundaries. We narrowed it to two. This is something you break down making sure there's equity between the two service areas you're not creating a greater fee, or maybe you want to but for us we're trying to create a balance for the service areas. Roughly similar VMT per service area, that last bullet point.
As I mentioned the RRIF share is then appropriated by using the same percentage of the RTP project by service area. So, that RRIF share, that is the unfunded share that we identified for the next ten years, for all of the capacity driven projects in our region. Overall, that dollar amount is roughly about a billion dollars. We say 10 percent of that is the unfunded share that's the new developers' cost over the next two years. Talk about how, this is how we break down the service area, and the bottom row start was $250 plus per VMT, those who developed that.
Here's an example of our fee schedule, and you see as we develop, this can be broken down many different ways. Interesting we look at single family residents. We did it based off just a dwelling. We don't consider big houses, how many bedrooms, does it have a closet. Hey, it's a dwelling, this is a cost for the development to do and collect fees on. Like wide this has a lot of back and forth with the development community and this continues for more, of course, throughout the years here. In the far right we see in green the difference between the different editions. This is something as we continue to update the CIP and what impact does it have to us as community as well as development community. We see the different changes on. Different types of development use.
Here's the rest of the fee schedule here. This is our current fee schedule we have. One thing I like to note as well is that we have automatic indexing to CPI every year. So, that's not something that needs to be voted on for us. That's something that automatically updated based off inflation. Fiveyear rolling average. So, these automatically get updated based off the fiveyear rolling average, that's going to be agreed upon as part of our program.
Moving on to roles and responsibilities. So, a part of that RRIF, local cooperative agreements we find different roles and response acts. Us, at RTC we're tasked with coordinating joint efforts of local governments to administer the RRIF program. The RTC shall be responsible for the following:we do the coordination and updates on land use assumptions. Prepare any changes to the RRIF ordinances, we help convene those that technical advisory committee, we make changes through that process. By statute, we are required to update the program every three years, or relook at it every three years and talk about RRIF fees, in the RRIF program as well as we administer the overall RRIF program.
As for participating local governments, there is three of them. What they are responsible for ensuring that they act as what we call the capital improvement advisory committee. So, we have to seek their approval every time we update the RRIF CIP. So, when a permit comes in, and there's any determination about what land use they fall under, that person is responsible for collecting that fee, and also charging the appropriate fee through their permit process. Also this, is a four-part agreement. So, they are governed and agreed to they do what other jurisdictions do. One jurisdiction can't go off and do their own thing. But in order for this to work everybody has to be Marched in the same direction. And lastly, they are responsible to monitor the use of river credits and RRIF waivers, I'll jump in here in a second.
So, on that note, our program has morphed and has become more complex. And we made different changes and modifications. Some are good practices. Some I would maybe recommend avoiding but it works force us for now and will continue the work
So, what are RRIF credits and waivers? It is a way if a developer is conditioned to build a road improvement listed in that CIP, they are not getting double taxed. If they are required to widen the road from two lanes to four lanes based off their development. They don't have to necessarily pay that impact fee. So, they will receive credits. And that's an agreement between the developer, RTC and that local entity, and it's used to credit for their impact fees. And for the developer for reconstruction of their improvements, which credit, impact fees, were also touched upon, they could actually sell it as well.
Let me go back one slide real fast.
So, back in 2016, we updated the RRIF for the fifth edition. We changed how the developers’ received credits and we switched to waivers which is measures in dollars. This is more of a balanced approach, and it was a way to maybe swing the balance more back into the public's agency favor. There were excess credits that were out there, and it is creating unbalance into the third party network. So, we made that switch into waivers so they could only generate as much waivers as they're actually going to pay in fees. They'll have outstanding credits or waivers out there that they would use somewhere else.
So, here's the success of the program the last ten years. It generated over $35 million. Look at credits used. You can look at it two ways. You can say that $89 million is not money collected by the local agencies. However, I like to think that 89 million dollar is actually, money that's already in the ground being utilized by the public and we have a ten-year window of monetizing that benefit to the community. So, you see an overall you add both of those together, you collected 120 million dollar out of that ten-year period T. Is successful of doing what it is supposed to do.
I'll talk about credits shortly. This is where we got out of whack. We have over 60,000 credited available. If you go back to dollars for VMT. What I said about $250 for VMTs is the current rate. Do the quick math there's over $150 million of credits available. There's not $150 million of fees that can ever, ever be built out. So, it is way out of whack. We have allowed and will continue to allow developers to share their sell their credits on a third market as private seller and private buyer. We have a RRIF automation program that keeps track of those transactions. I don't think they are being sold for dollar per dollar. I'm sure they are going for less than that. So that creates a very unique stock market type of facility. I'm not sure is the best to follow suit on.
You see there's a small number that represent the majority of those credit holders, as roughly 80 percent. 18 credit holders’ rep 80 percent of available credits. They do expire, though. We are almost out of it if you want to count another 15 years or so. So, extend credits and granted the credits to be used out to 2040. As I said we switched from credits to waivers. This program is no longer available. No more credits are created. You can only use waivers and waivers can only be used on the development record. So can't be transferred outside of the development of record. We tone that in and don't have the stock market exchange that we used to have.
There's a little more information how the transfer of credit waiver uses. The first one old credit style can be transferred to third parties and third party considers pay 100 percent of the fee for the development of the development of record. Now, if that third party gets throws credits, and they want to use it outside, they have to use it in the same benefit district so north and south, but they can do it anywhere in that benefit district. Now, waivers can be transferred to third parties but can only be paid for as a result of that development in that development of record of course, there's nuances, too, about changes of land use and so forth but that's the generate of that.
So, I appreciate everyone's time and just an overview of our impact free in northern Nevada. Happy to answer any questions.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Great. Thank you so much. Dale, we have questions being typed into the chat. But maybe you could elaborate a little bit more, Dale. How unique is this program as MPO kind of administered program, and do localities, can they do things on their own, or do they have to work with their MPO to implement impact fees in Nevada?
>> Sure, there is local agencies can issue their own impact fees. This one is just unique how the program works here, in Washoe County before we had any indexing of fuel tax. This was a major revenue draw that was needed by new development that was occurring. So, it was best for the region. Everything comes up together since jurisdictional boundaries that really just match up to one another and whole network looked at regionally. That's how that is bought into it. We explore previously, doesn't make sense for each local jurisdictions to administer their own program. We felt collectively this is the best way to move forward. It is probably not we had to restart this program. Maybe do something differently, such as talk about the credit program or how we develop, or impact or assess fees for each development type, but overall, it seems to accomplish both what we're looking to accomplish from, from the public agency said, as well as development side.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. We have a new question in the chat. Joseph asked, buying and selling of impact fees, if they balance account. However, if a developer does not specifically make improvements or credits, doesn't the public suffer from the unimproved roadway system?
>> DALE KELLER: Yes, the question is, if the credits are out there and developer buys credits, that allows them not to put into the system, you can say yes. However, is the initial the initial developer who initially received credits, built something physical infrastructure in our region, that was built by and paid for by development. So, we're reaping the benefits of that development for that bend fit district. So, if you push and pull, and you can say the new developer is not putting into the fee, of the new C IP, however, I would say that we would not recognize those benefits of the initial investment.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. That makes sense, thank you. A new question from Charles. Are the fees used for local percent towards state funded roads? I think it's talking about local match, maybe?
>> DALE KELLER: Yes, it can be. So, yes. We use those as part of any Federal funds to, as considered a local match. Also, for state routes, we do show improvements, CIP improvements on state routes. So, they can receive a credit if they're going to do improvement on a state route, or yeah, like a state highway.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Great. I see some other people typing but Rafael, I wanted to go back to an earlier question about the use of seed revenue for transit operations and maintenance in San Francisco?
>> RAFAEL ALDRETE: Thanks. Yes in San Francisco we have a situation that's called the transit system availability fee. And that is the fee that is used, part of it is used for transit capital and maintenance. So, while it is correct that even the American planning association, and their policy guidelines or impact fees, they are very clear that impact fees cannot be used to cover normal operations and maintenance or personnel cost, now the fees have to be used for capital improvements. In the next study San Francisco did for their sustainability fee, transportation sustainability fee, they do show argument for the reason the fee can be used. It is summarized basically. The next study said the impact on the development of the need for capital maintenance is based on service as growth occurs. New development generates new trips, that means the transportation authority must increase the supply of transit services and in particular of capital maintenance expenditures to maintain that existing level. And the benefit to the development from the use of fee is based on improving transit vehicle, and vehicles providing transit service, so we include maintenance, and in turn increases revenue service hours of the transit threat and increases the amount of team the vehicle is out of service and keeps level of service and they have the proportional cost.
To my knowledge the fee has not been successfully challenged so far but it is correct that in most cases they consider best practice at least by the APD.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Any, thank you for that. We have a new question asking if you can speak a little more how long-range transportation plan is tied to the impact fee program in Reno.
>> DALE KELLER: Yeah. Sure. I don't know if you can pull up my slide again.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Sure. We can go back to yours.
So, we take all of the capacity projects identified in the first ten-year window, I want to say, RRIF CIP, capital improvement plan is based off ten years of improvements. Instead of picking and choosing certain project, we incorporated every project in there. And we made the assumption that we and this is unique and I'm not saying this is the best way, instead of becoming a very specific list of projects, we said that in our CIP, that we spread it around of how much development fee associated with a project.
So, if you look at, on the left side of the screen, the four on the top here, I can actually show this here. Look at No. 4 here, instead of saying that project is fully funded by gas tax, as an example. We said a certain percentage of this would be funded by road impact fee the. We did that for all of the projects for the first five years and the next five years. If you look overall in the program and develop that CIP, we're saying everything included in this network you see between capacity driven projects, multi modal projects, a certain component of that will be funded through regional road impact fees.
Hopefully that answers your question.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. Yeah, thank you. Next question may be available. May be applicable to both Tampa and Reno. What type of incentives exist for a developer to build the roadway improvement inhouse, versus paying a fee to the local government authority via an impact fee. I'll let you go first, Dale and see if Vik has anything to add.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Sure, sometimes they don't have a chance or have an option, meaning their traffic impact study or statement says, hey, we need you need to build an extra lane because of your development. And so that allows them to build that improvement and then not have to pay that impact fee. Because they're doing thwart that part of the capacity driven side. Now, if their traffic impact statement says there's no offsite improvements needed. What we see the developer saying we will pay the impact fee. A lot of times it turns out that building those physical improvements costs a lot more than what those impact fees are. So that's part of it. And the second part, you saw on the credit side with 600,000 credits available. The developers know they can get those 50 cents on a dollar, so they would rather pay it that way.
>> VIK BHIDE: Hi.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Go ahead Vik.
>> VIK BHIDE: In Tampa's case it is dependent on scale and context. So, generally, very large developments or districtwide developments like the water street slide that we saw the before and after of, developers do show interest in wanting to build out the infrastructure themselves. Partly because they feel they have control over the environment. Partly because of complexity of the development and staging and other factors that they need to grapple with. And then the context is also important, because if it's a very large development of a higher profile, then they may want to go over and above our minimum standards, and oftentimes they will want to build it themselves.
So, it is scale and context, in essence.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Thank you for that. We do see a few more questions being typed. Jen, maybe okay. Let's take this question. Does the RTC have some control over the traffic impact study, or is it at the hand of the developer and their engineers
>> DALE KELLER: This is Dale from RTC. Yes, each restrictions have requirements of what is included in their traffic impact statements or studies. We do as part of that development review, we provide input at local jurisdictions we partner together. Since it is an agency, we don't put conditions on them, however we have control and cooperation and collaboration with the local jurisdictions of what what they're being, maybe conditioned to do. Up with thing we do work with our local partners with, is to assure that they are not conditioning requirements on development that's not needed on our long-term transportation plan, meaning if a roadway is twolane facility now, we're showing we don't need a four lane facility in 2050. Please do not tell the developer you need to develop a four lane facility as an example.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Vik, I don't know if you have anything to add from the Tampa perspective on the impact study, for the given development?
>> VIK BHIDE: So, we review all of the impact studies. What we find realistically, is there are a handful of firms locally that specialize, and maybe do 70 percent of all impact. And so, we do get an opportunity to review and comment
>> RAFAEL ALDRETE: Okay. All right. Thank you. This next question from Jonathan. Vik brings up an example that could illustrate the contrast between plan based an incremental based approach. Could the presenters provide some comments as to when and why different approaches might be used. Vik, let's start with you.
>> VIK BHIDE: Sure. So, this is a good question. I mean, generally speaking, you know, a plan-based approach is, in my mind a little more methodical, where you set the pigeonholes and just fill the little buckets. So, I favor a plan based approach rather than incremental approach. But honestly, I don't have much more to add to that.
>> VIK BHIDE: Okay. Thank you. Dale, do we have any comment on that question?
>> DALE KELLER: I think it works best if we have that we’re in the mix right in the middle. We show everything on the plan, we have more of a not prescriptive approach, but programmatic approach to ours. I think it is easier to have a very preventative, clear, list of projects to base off your cost on.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Jen, while we're waiting to see if other questions come up, maybe we can explain the fire share window over there on the left above the attendee list?
>> JENNIFER SHELBY: If you look on the left of the screen, if you do not see the file share window or pod that has today's presentation slides in just a moment. Yep. So, other resources that you could download, there's a I believe a primer from today's that relates to today's session, and other more general resources about BIL and how to access those fund. One of those the impact fee primer was released in 2021 and is the basis for Rafael's presentation today so, that will stimulate the question if you take a peek at that. If you would like to download one of these files you can hover over the file name is the file share window, you will see an icon with the downward pointing arrow. Clicking that should start the download process and you could also click the three dots at the top of that section. Upper corner of the mile share section. The menu pops up and you can download all at once. If you're interested in applying for professional development credits again, please do send us an email at valuecapture@DOT.gov. Value Capture all one word.
Great. We did get one more question
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Do they of the local organizations charge impact fees from the RTC?
>> DALE KELLER: They do not. They have other utility fees. One entity. City of Spark has a multi use fee or trails fee that they implement with nothing else on local roads.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. Rafael, I wonder if you want to chime in here.
>> RAFAEL ALDRETE: I have not really a question but request for comments for Vik and Dale, I was wondering if you could talk about any nuances or issues that you experience have, regarding the timing of the fee assessment and timing of the collection of the fees, but from the perspective of the developers, what has been your experience over there.
>> VIK BHIDE: This is Vik. I can start up. As far as the timing goes, we found that completion of development, or CO more or less, that time is better. It creates less friction, between the developer than the agencies. And also, it allows for really capturing an understanding any Delta that may have existed from previous calculations to actually ending up where we are. So, that’s does that answer your question?
>> VIK BHIDE: Yes, it does. But I was also wondering what, you know, your could you is that for the collection, do you give them an estimate early on? Kind of a preliminary estimate of the total that they or, okay.
>> VIK BHIDE: Yes, the fee estimate is provided early on, and then it is implemented on completion.
>> DALE KELLER: Likewise, at RTV, the fee schedule we developed has a general understanding what they can anticipate from the initial tentative map, as an example, how many units and so forth. And they pay, based off when they want to start their building permit, or they can pay it at occupancy. So, that's an opportunity. Now, we talk about the timing of collecting those and doing projects. There's always that delay. And we do have weird dealing with it right now, the timing of the project, now the development is billed, all of the new residents out there and now we're building improvements two years later. That creates more headache more dust, more construction of things that could have gotten done sooner. There is a delay for us implementing a lot of these projects once those funds do come in. I'll also add on the credit system or waiver system, is we initially, as we work together on a developer agreement, is we have estimates that we think, that's the cost, and we actually pay actual. So, we request, when the improvements are actually built, that they request to get credits and waivers from the RTC, and we look at invoices, we look at all of the receipts and then we agree upon to that dollar amount.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: Okay. Thanks, both, for that response. Rafael?
>> RAFAEL ALDRETE: So the next question I want Vik and Dale to elaborate on, is accurate for doing the post assessment of the fees. How much activity or work do you see when it comes to situations such as refunds or challenges. How much of your staff time of how administratively burdensome is it for you
>> VIK BHIDE: Sure. So, I'll start this off. So, there is a certain amount of challenge to fees or activities and a lot of them typically happen to multi phased products that go on for several years. Oneoffer projects are a little more finite. They are a clearer, shorter term. And we don't have many examples right now. But there was a time in the early 2000, mid 2000 when we still had a lot of subdivision activity that was going on in the new Tampa area, a newly annexed area from the County and those were literally multiyear subdivision, some of which are being built out even now. And we see some challenges relative to that, particularly around building of transportation facilities that were, you know, imagined back then, which today developers may have changed hands, and a new developer comes in and may not feel the same way but it's really for those multi phased development.
>> DALE KELLER: This is Dale from RTC. We don't see a lot of challenges to the fee itself. We're very transparent about how the fees are developed, and through those two manuals. I also say, in our general administrative model or GAM. We have an opportunity for the developer to do their own independent fee calculation. The caveat on that is regarding staff time, is that they are locked into that. Regardless if there's more or less into one of the designated development types that we outlined on there, they are locked in. So, we do have some challenges on, hey, I should be I think I should be assessed based off industrial versus commercial or, well this, shouldn't count or not count as square footage. So, we work with local jurisdictions and the developer on those issues. The other point I want to say, our pain point is the credit system, and, hey, I want them extended or can I use it on this probably or that probably, and the last thing I want to say, the other pinch point for us, or pain point is, like I said, if since we have included everything, and it is not on the list, and it is required, there's a lot of well, I need to be included in your CIP, why am I not. We have that conversation quite often. That's why we keep updating the process and try to refine that to make it as clear as possible, or show flexibility, meaning, all right. We mentioned that through our transportation planning efforts. So, we'll work with you in good faith, and we need to update our program.
>> RAFAEL ALDRETE: Thank you, that really complements well the material on the primer in the presentation.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: We have one more question in the chat window, do you have developments where the developer buildings infrastructure and independent builders build the homes. If so, does the developer still bay pay the fee? I guess we'll start with Vik.
>> VIK BHIDE: Yeah. I can't recall similar examples, I don't think we have anything like that. Okay. Dale?
>> DALE KELLER: So a build infrastructure the developer buildings the infrastructure and independent builders build the homes? So, it does happen. This goes to the third-party transfer. You have overall developer, and they sell to D.R. Horton Brothers facility. They can transfer those or pay they can transfer those credits or waivers to that home builder. Like D.R. Horton or they can pay those fees on behalf of a home builder such as D.R. Horton.
>> PEPPER SANTALUCIA: All right. Not seeing any more questions, so, Jen, I'll turn things over to you.
>> JENNIFER SHELBY: All right. As we wrap up today's webinar we invite you to provide feedback using the evaluation tool that you see in the center of the webinar room. Also that email address, I provided, if you want to ask about getting credits or proof of participation for training development hours, that can also be used for feedback if the tool is not working for you. So, that's value capture at DOT.gov and I believe Pepper dropped that in the chat. Value capture, all one word. We would like to thank the presenters for their presentation today, and also all of the people that are joining us to get all of this great information. Also, I would like to acknowledge the ongoing support of the Federal Highways web conferencing office. Very helpful making these go smoothly. With that, we conclude today's webinar. Thank you.
>> OPERATOR: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference, we do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.
