latest transportation story,<\/a> there is an interesting factoid that presents itself.<\/p>\nLast year the city considered traffic-impact fees for developers, based on the square footage of new developments coming into town. Apparently it wasn\u2019t popular in the business community.<\/p>\n
This year, though, it looks like everyday people who own a car may be getting hit first with the fees. From the discussions so far (nothing has been approved yet) the Council could vote to tack another $10 to $20 onto our vehicle-license fees. That would raise anywhere from $1-$2 million a year for street projects.<\/p>\n
I say, whoa, Hoss. Put on the brakes.<\/p>\n
Why aren\u2019t they looking at developers first? These are people with bigger pockets who create far more traffic impacts with new developments than your average Joe who drives around town in a beat-up Topaz.<\/p>\n
Developers may make a city more viable by bringing in more homes and businesses, but when they\u2019ve cleared their profit, they are gone, and they\u2019ve created something that will impact Kent traffic for years to come.<\/p>\n
Of course they\u2019re not going to want to pay for traffic impacts.<\/p>\n
Nobody does.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s up to our Council to say who should jump first, in terms of new fees.<\/p>\n
I say let it be the developers.<\/p>\n
Even in the little logging town of Sedro-Woolley, where I worked for a number of years, developers were expected to pay traffic-impact fees. They were hit first \u2013 nobody even discussed bringing small-potatoes residents into the picture.<\/p>\n
If I am wrong on this one, then tell me where.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our City Council is discussing something that will continue to dog every Puget Sound city for years to come:
\nStreet projects and how to pay for them.
\nWhile I have to give them credit for putting everything on the table, in terms of which ox to gore for the required funds, it\u2019s distressing to see where they\u2019re looking first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5574"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}