Costa Mesa doesn’t raise traffic fees for developers

For the 11th year in a row, the Costa Mesa City Council agreed to maintain the status quo on a traffic fee levied on developers.

The one-time fee, unchanged since 2005, tops out at $181 per average daily car trip for any type of development — from residential to industrial — that averages 100 or more car trips per day. The fee, first established in 1993, was once as high as $228.

Now, it is as low as $50 per car trip, for developments averaging between 26 and 50 a day.

The funds are meant to help pay for infrastructure improvements needed to withstand the impacts of new projects.

Keeping the fee as is was approved with a 4-1 vote, with Councilwoman Sandy Genis dissenting.

Though she eventually voted alongside the council majority, Councilwoman Katrina Foley had reservations about maintaining the fee while Costa Mesa experiences a surge of new residential development — a scenario she compared to water gushing out of a fire hose.

Foley made a motion to keep the fee system as is, but take out an incentive program that benefits the larger developments generating 100 daily car trips or more.

That program, according to city staff, gives a developer a maximum discount of $12,075 and saves the development community an estimated $75,000 each year.

Given those hundreds of housing units being built, “I certainly think the incentive program has more than served its purpose,” Foley said.

Genis agreed, contending that the $75,000 saved annually by developers has instead been $75,000 paid by the taxpayers.

Foley’s motion failed, with only Genis voting in favor.

Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer and Councilman Gary Monahan defended the fee system. Righeimer noted that it was carefully calculated by a long-standing committee and wasn’t necessarily picked out of thin air.

Monahan, who worked to establish the fee years ago, said Costa Mesa once had a disproportionately high fee compared to neighboring cities. A developer of a McDonald’s restaurant and others “were telling us it was insane,” Monahan said.

He added that a lower amount is a boon for small businesses “to get open without getting a fee that was going to get really tough on them.”

Foley and Genis contended that Monahan’s reasoning was inaccurate and argued that new businesses aren’t creating new buildings and paying the traffic fees; rather, they’re moving into existing structures.

*

Housing debate

The council heard plans for a reworked housing proposal at 522 and 526 Bernard St., in the Westside near The Triangle.

Newport Beach-based MDM Investment Holdings is looking to replace eight 1940s-era rental bungalows on the roughly half-acre lot with 10 contemporary-style homes, priced in the low $700,000s.

MDM first received approval for the project in 2013, but has since adjusted the site plan to have more three-story homes and fewer deviations.

A Costa Mesa resident and rental property owner, Miguel Zamarripa, expressed frustration about the influx of new housing in general, such as the 113-unit Blue Sol apartment complex, also on Bernard Street, and the 37-unit Maple Crossing tract off Victoria Street that’s proceeding with construction.

Zamarripa said he is pro-development, but, “I just woke up and realized that there are over a thousand people, a thousand new cars, 400 new homes and a lot more coming ... within walking distance of my property.

“Does that sound right? Do you [the council] have that problem around your property, around your residence, since you are Costa Mesa residents?”

Genis suggested that Zamarripa talk to the Costa Mesa First activists in the audience, who are collecting signatures for an initiative that would make some new projects go directly before voters for approval.

Righeimer, who has argued that the petition would scare off businesses from coming to town and stifle growth, cut Genis off, saying it wasn’t appropriate for her to talk, from the dais, about signing political initiatives.

“I didn’t say whether it was good or bad,” Genis said. “I just said [he] might want to talk to them.”

“It was your tone,” Mayor Steve Mensinger said.