GMA and Concurrency (11/25/02)

1. It is our impression that curbing sprawl-like land use patterns in urban
areas under the GMA has been successful via densification and center
oriented development. However, "concurrency" is falling behind and
endangering GMA goals. In your jurisdiction, what types of concurrency requirements are
required? How do you measure them? Are they successful?
[ response ]

2. Why do we hear more about transportation concurrency failures than
about other urban public services? What are the long-term consequences?
[ response ]

3. Given that the provision of transportation services is very high,
should concurrency decisions be made within a single jurisdiction?
[ response ]

4. Different road provisions have different authorities (with
responsibilities shared among the state, counties and cities). Yet travel
crosses jurisdictional boundaries. How can we calculate the fair costs
(e.g. development impact fees) to provide the needed increased services?
[ response ]

5. Given that the provision of transportation services is very high,
should concurrency decisions be made within a single jurisdiction?
[ response ]

 

Ivan Miller
Puget Sound Regional Council
The Puget Sound Regional Council has spent the last year and a half studying concurrency. Please visit our website to view our two reports:
http://www.psrc.org/projects/growthstrategies/concurrency.htm

Further, as a lead on the project, I would be very interested in seeing the results of the survey. Please let me know if this is possible.

Regards, and continued best wishes for your work.

Anonymous
We've been forced to assess LOS F to several areas in our transportation
element because they're overused now and there's no way to build
ourselves out of the situation (in this case, geographic constraints
over and above funding).

Rich Carson
Clark County
Transportation is our primary problem. But we do collect impact fee on
transportation, schools and parks. So we have concurrency requirements for
these too.

Brad Collins
City of Port Angeles
The City of Port Angeles has identified concurrency standards for most urban services: street level of service (LOS D), water, sewer, school, police, fire, parks are considered. Usually street has been the primary concurrency issue and that has been infrequent with the City's low growth rate. The standards are for the most part established as numerical measures that can be easily calculated for any particular development and location. Since we have not experienced a concurrency problem, the measures have not been tested.

Pete Swensson
Thurston County
Olympia requires concurrency only for traffic congestion level of
service (LOS) improvements. The same goes for other jurisdictions in
Thurston County. Olympia annually collects traffic counts to identify
facilities (typically streets and intersections) that appear headed
toward LOS failure within the next 6-year capital facilities planning
(CFP) period. The growth in traffic is compared with anticipated
traffic levels based on the mandated GMA growth projections. Either the
projection of traffic growth, or the calculated traffic impact of the
GMA growth projections, can raise the red flag of an predicted LOS
failure. Projects are then identified to prevent the anticipated LOS
failure, and placed in the CFP. This is also standard practice
locally.

Are the requirements successful? The method does help identify future
needs and set in motion the process for addressing them. No project has
ever been denied here based on concurrency requirements; instead the
concurrency rules often result in a development being required to
contribute to a street or intersection project.

The biggest problem is that the current recession has played havoc with
the reliability of six-year growth projections. Our mandated GMA
projections are entirely reasonable for the 20-to-25-year time horizon,
but for now, we are way below the curve. It will take more than 6 years
before we move back into the vicinity of the projected population
levels. Hence on paper we have more project needs than we can
reasonably expect to need in reality. This does not affect development
exactions (like impact fees), but it does make it very hard to provide
real "truth in planning" in the CFP.

Roger Wagoner
Berryman & Henigar
Most of the jurisdictions we serve use impact fees to varying degrees. Some have "general facility charges" for utilities. Many still use SEPA as the primary tool. Dealing with concurrency "on-site" is much easier than "off-site". Politically,
communities that want to grow are reluctant to levy fees or charges to the full extent they can justify, fearing loss of market share to the jurisdictions they compete with. For those that want to limit growth, use of these measures to those ends means
that the rationale has to be VERY strong to withstand legal challenges.

Roberta Lewandowski
City of Redmond
Redmond only uses the term 'concurrency' for transportation. For
utilities, there is either capacity, or the developer must provide it before
a project can proceed. Everyone pays into the capital expansion fund. For
the other capital projects, such as Parks, Schools, Police and Fire, we use
a general planning/funding approach. That is, we have estimated the
facilities we need to serve our growth targets, and the cost, and have a
workable finance plan in place. We check our progress when we update the
growth targets, every 5-10 years, and adjust the finance plan accordingly.

Rita Robinson
Washington State Office of Community Development
I work in growth management for the state, so what I see is that some jurisdictions are doing well on currency, some aren't. The state has a big infrastructure problem. State and local funding is lagging way behind in many areas. In 1998, the state Legislature provided funds for an infrastructure study to identify local needs. A final report was compiled in June 1999. It showed billions of dollars of unmet local needs for roadways, bridges, water, sewer, and stormwater facilities. If you haven't read the study, get a copy. The infrastructure problem existed long before the GMA was passed. The GMA offers local communities ways to deal with the infrastructure deficit, but often local officials are reluctant to raise taxes to support the needed services. Instead, they, as community leaders, accept low level of service standards for roads. F is congested in a system of A through F. If you select F for part of your road system, then congestion just continues to get worse at the F level.

The Local Governance Commission did a study in the late 1980s describing changes needed in funding local governments. Their recommendations have yet to be implemented. These documents are worthwhile reading for students.

I'm attaching a copy of our capital facilities fact sheet [see also transportation fact sheet] for more information on infrastructure funding. One thing you have missed in your questions is that the GMA provides for "truth in planning." No longer can capital facilities plans be "wish lists." Local governments need to set out what capital facilities are needed to provide for growing communities and how they will be paid for.

Olympia has a good concurrency ordinance. Tacoma also. However, both have capacity in their road systems. Olympia has two LOS standards. In downtown Olympia and along high-density corridors, more congestion is acceptable than in the rest of the city and urban growth areas. Redmond negotiated with Microsoft to get funds to help with traffic problems caused by Microsoft expansion.

Heather McCartney
City of Mukilteo
Mukilteo does not presently have concurrency requirements. We will be considering them for transportation during the 2003 Transportation Plan Update. We are monitoring intersection LOS and would propose to use this for our concurrency measure. However, all of the key intersections are along state highways and state highways don't have concurrency requirements (except Whidbey Island). We also may have to consider schools infrastructure as a new capacity issue. If School Districts can't pass levies and bond issues to add capacity or there are land availability issues then new development and rezones may not be allowed (a virtual moritorium).

Mary Lynne Evans
Snohomish County
Concurrency is required for transportation facilities (roads) in Snohomish County. Development proposals are evaluated in terms of their projected impact on arterial roads, in the context of road improvements planned over the next 6 years. If a development's projected peak hour trips will not cause the impacted arterial road(s) to fall below the minimum LOS established in the "Transportation Element" of the comprehensive plan, the development is issued a certificate of concurrency. Developments in urban growth areas that provide transit compatible design elements are allowed to impact the arterial network to one lower LOS level.

Once an arterial street falls below minimum LOS, it is labeled as "in arrears." No development proposal that produces more than 3 peak-hour trips on such a street can receive a certificate of concurrency. Public Works staff monitors the arterial network and produces regular reports that identify road segments that are either "in arrears" or at risk of becoming in arrears. The system has helped Snohomish County better monitor the present and future travel demands on arterial roads and to better target limited transportation funding to roads that present concurrency problems.

Anonymous
The "average guy" might not notice a three-second erosion in police
response time if he calls 911 once a year, but if he's stuck in traffic
he KNOWS it! And, if he's stuck in traffic more frequently once that
new development down the street is occupied, it doesn't take him all
that long to put two and two together. I'm not sure if you're asking
about the long-term consequences of failing to meet concurrency or the
long-term consequences of a heighted awareness of those failures. Given
the latter, I'm leaning toward the long-term consequences being an
attitude of "punish the politicians" at the ballot box. It's what gives
people like Tim Eyman credibility, because being stuck in traffic pisses
people off, and when they hear him talking with religious-like zeal
about who's at fault, they believe it. In reality, of course, this
punishes everyone and service/facilities cuts over time will exacerbate
the problems.

Rich Carson
Clark County
Most other infrastructure/services (water, sewer, solid waste) is rated
based. In other words the rate is increased to include the cost of doing
business. The rate revenue can also be bonded to build large projects.
Transportation is not run as a utility and therefor has no rate. Instead it
is a fixed pool of money and has actually been getting smaller despite the
fact the population is growing. Long term we have no choice but to cut the
level-of-service and allow more congestion.

Brad Collins
City of Port Angeles
Roadway congestion and consequent reductions in LOS trigger not only SEPA impact analysis but also development mitigation or denial. Most of the other urban services are generally yes or no on service capacity. With increasing layoffs it is possible police and/or park standards could be missed, but I would expect the level of service standard to be reduced rather a development denied. The long term consequences of setting and enforcing concurrency standards are the likelihood that new developments will have to pay more for the services that they need to develop. Where the community does not want to either make the development pay more or be denied, then the concurrency standards will be reduced to allow more congestion or larger class room sizes, etc.

Pete Swensson
Thurston County
Severe traffic congestion is the clear consequence of transportation
concurrency failures, and EVERYBODY notices that because everyone uses
that system a lot. Not everyone notices congested parks or schools,
because not everyone uses those systems as much. Also, transportation
concurrency is the only one mandated by the GMA. Any others are
permitted, but not required. Here in Thurston County, no jurisdiction
has adopted concurrency requirements for any other facilities.
(Actually, water and sewer systems could be considered to have
concurrency requirements, but they have been standard operating
procedure for so long that no one thinks of them in that way.)

The long-term consequences of transportation concurrency requirements
are not clear. It all depends on how they are implemented. A typical
approach is to have lower LOS standards (i.e., higher congestion is
tolerated) in urban areas, and higher standards in rural areas.
Florida, the pioneer in establishing concurrency requirements, found
that if the same standards were in place everywhere, it drove
development to the fringes where there was less congestion. This was
the opposite of what was intended. On the other hand, having higher
standards in rural areas will mean that more road money is directed
there to build more lane-miles (e.g., by adding more lanes to a two-lane
road). That seems counter-productive to me also. It would seem to me
that it would be necessary to strictly limit rural suburban growth --
simply requiring higher LOS and concurrency standards in the rural areas
is too indirect a strategy.

Roger Wagoner
Berryman & Henigar
Everyone has to get around. Not everyone has school kids or uses public parks and recreation facilities. And while (almost) everyone needs public water, sewer, public safety and emergency services, the relative individual costs of these things seem to
be worth it. Congestion really isn't that bad if you look at our commuting patterns, proliferation of SOVs, etc. Maybe it just has to get a whole lot worse . . .

Roberta Lewandowski
City of Redmond
We hear more about transportation 'concurrency' failures because most
jurisdictions have specific measures for this type of concurrency, and we
deny or downscale development if the project will degrade the system either
below the standard, or below the existing service level, if it is already
worse. Most of us don't measure the status of maintaining other capital
needs that closely. Certainly there has been lots of news in the paper
the last two years about the inadequacy of the park system to meet demand
for fields throughout King County, and the King County parks an pool
closures will make it worse. Still, we don't have a concurrency measure for
that item. Same for schools. A few years ago we were threatening to deny
projects, and did delay some, due to lack of school space, but now in
Redmond, the schools have capacity. Still we did not talk about that space
shortage as a concurrency issue, tho it was.

Another concern that many planners have is that our cities have multimodal
goals for transportation, but most of us only measure concurrency for
roads/streets. The result is that we may require widened intersections,
which interfere with bike and pedestrian travel, in order to meet the
standard we all adopted. Why did we all adopt such a standard? For the
same reason that you pound a nail in the wall with your shoe -- you use the
tool you have available. There aren't very many examples of ways to measure
adequacy, and to finance, transit, ped and bike alternatives, and call the
system concurrent. But, many of us are working on such a system this time
around, and Florida has done some good work in this area.

Rita Robinson
Washington State Office of Community Development
It's a bigger issue than "concurrency failures." It's the whole infrastructure funding problem at the state and local level. The GMA allows impact fees to be used. Many local governments haven't adopted them. The impact fees are designed to pay for part of the costs of growth, not all of them. Local governments have new tools to work with under the GMA, such as impact fees, but local officials aren't using them.

You can see the current transportation problems that the region is having due to years of not fixing the local government financing problems and the infrastructure funding problems.

The long-term consequences of lagging behind in infrastructure funding can be seen on the roadways every day. Concurrency failures are only part of it.

Heather McCartney
City of Mukilteo
Transportation is coordinated through each County and then the Puget Sound Regional Council. Also the planning efforts of the State DOT are considered. There are no similar mechanisms for schools or housing, etc.

Mary Lynne Evans
Snohomish County
Transportation concurrency is required by the GMA for all cities and counties that fall under its jurisdiction. Concurrency for other public facilities is optional - and most local jurisdictions have limited its use accordingly. If a local government establishes a concurrency requirement for another facility (such as schools, sanitary sewers, etc.) and starts to have problems, it can always decide to relax its requirements (in accordance with its own local code) without running afoul of the GMA. This option is not available for transportation, which is probably why more is heard about transportation concurrency problems. Unless state and regional solutions are found soon to the transportation funding problem, it is likely that local jurisdictions will be confronted with having to choose between even lower transportation service levels or significant limitations on development activity.

Anonymous
Should they? No, probably not. But c'mon, we live in the real world!
It's difficult for a single jurisdiction to come to agreement on
transportation priorities, much less that jurisdiction and its
neighbors. Anytime you broach a subject such as this, all manner of
political give-and-take comes into play, and sometimes the results
aren't what you hoped for. To make matters worse, even neighboring
jurisdictions may have differing transportation goals, which further
impedes a meaningful outcome. I think the worst-case scenario is
attempting to communicate not across equal jurisdictional boundaries
(i.e., city to city or county to county) about such topics, but
laterally between jurisdictions (i.e., city to county or city to state)
where many other potential roadblocks (pardon the pun) emerge.

Rich Carson
Clark County
I don't understand the statement part of this question. It is not a given
that "the provision of transportation services is very high." In fact it is
getting lower all the time. But yes, such decision must be made
mulit-jurisdictional with a region or a county.

Brad Collins
City of Port Angeles
Yes for local transportation facilities within one jurisdiction, and no for transportation facilities which are mulitjurisdictional. The difficulty is that concurrency is often a multijurisdictional concern but the land use decision requiring concurrency is a local decision.

Pete Swensson
Thurston County
This depends on the interdependence of the jurisdictions involved
(probably measured at the facility level). Using traffic modeling to
select particular sections of roads and particular intersections, the
source of traffic on them can identified. In Thurston County, all the
jurisdictions and their traffic network are extremely interdependent.
In many Seattle neighborhoods, or rural parts of many counties, the LOS
impacts are probably generated pretty locally.

At the same time, if the financial responsibility to fix a given
concurrency problem is limited to one jurisdiction and one development
proposal, the decision will have to be in the hands of that
jurisdiction.

Roger Wagoner
Berryman & Henigar
I don't understand this one.

Roberta Lewandowski
City of Redmond
We do have ways to track concurrency, and share fees, across
jurisdictions, but it is somewhat inefficient. For example, the City of
Sammamish is impacted by Redmond development, but they have not asked for
mitigation funds. Kirkland, Bellevue and King County regularly collect
fees/funds from the city and developments to fund needs in their
jurisdictions, and we've done this for a long time.

TRAC and Dan Carlson at the UW are working on a study to look at new
approaches for concurrency for the four eastside cities, Issaquah, Kirkland,
Redmond and Bellevue. They are finding such a different array of goals that
a common system of concurrency measures and fee collections may never make
sense, except for state highways.

Rita Robinson
Washington State Office of Community Development
Not a clear question.

Heather McCartney
City of Mukilteo
State Highways would need to also have a concurrency requirement to have a more coordinated effort. Local decisions on concurrency are coordinated with State Highways and the County - so it is not done totally by single entity.

Mary Lynne Evans
Snohomish County
No. Transportation facilities are typically regional resources. Scale and scope can vary but, I believe that region wide concurrency decisions that are properly implemented, should lead to improved levels of service throughout a given region.

Anonymous
Different road provisions have different authorities (with
responsibilities shared among the state, counties and cities). Yet
travel crosses jurisdictional boundaries. How can we calculate the fair costs
(e.g. development impact fees) to provide the needed increased services?

This question relies on the assumption that impact fees are a fair
method of assessing public costs attributable to individual projects.
While it's an attempt to take a systematic approach to exacting
development fees, I question how fair it is. You need to first step
back from this question and look at how difficult it is for local
jurisdictions to ensure that impact fees are used to answer the impacts
for which they're assessed. Frequently, jurisdictions are still unable
to keep up with demands, and may be forced to be more responsive to
grantmakers' priorities (because multiple funding sources are often
partnered for major projects) than their own priorities relating to
impact fees. Also, impact fees are overwhelmingly used to support
vehicular transportation, not alternate modes. We see, for example,
impact fees going toward sidewalks or bike lanes only in conjunction
with the road improvements they're principally funding. Lastly,
administration and accountability associated with impact fees is so
cumbersome that some jurisdictions have chosen not to utilize them.
Before we can start grappling with the interesting question you raise,
we need to go back and visit what isn't working with impact fees.

Brad Collins
City of Port Angeles
The current process allocates cost based on location of the facilities and their designation as state or local roadways. Capital budgeting of public funds, however, make the allocation of funding for improvements a very slow process that is not in sync with private development schedules. The result is that developments will pay the cost of improvements needed for their developments or wait until infrastructure improvements are planned and constructed with public funds. Transportation demand management does offer alternatives but has not been embraced by many jurisdictions or developers. Again, the more likely concurrency problem solution is to lower standards rather than increase services.

There is very little agreement on these among the public, and among the
elected policy-makers of different jurisdictions. There is disagreement
over street standards (Wide roads or narrow? Lots of landscaping or
very little? Bike lanes or not?). Over how much in public resources
should be directed to business areas versus residential neighborhoods,
and over how much either would improve the community as a whole. Over
whether various kinds of new development generate enough new revenues to
cover their new costs, or not. Over how much of the facility costs
should come from the general tax base versus developer exactions. Over
what method of imposing exactions is the most equitable: 1) impact fees
(based on GMA), 2) traffic improvement benefit districts (TIBDs), 3)
environmental impact mitigation (which includes traffic) based on the
State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), or 4) what-have-you.

Roger Wagoner
Berryman & Henigar
Traffic "sheds" - usually defined like watersheds around a major arterial or highway corridor.

Rita Robinson
Washington State Office of Community Development
Interview some local governments about how they are doing it: Mill Creek, Renton, Redmond, Bellevue, Seattle/King County, Vancouver/Clark County.

Heather McCartney
City of Mukilteo
This is a problem especially since the county transportation planning is not being done at a scale that is picking up significant capacity problems. The whole net work needs to be planned not just major arterials. Without transportation planning also addressing subareas, then not all the project improvements and costs are being picked up in the unincorporated areas so fair share is really only a portion of the cost. (Also note that impact fees can only charge up to 50% of the identified costs associated with growth - so the other 50% has to come other revenue sources or bond issues passed by existing residents).

Mary Lynne Evans
Snohomish County
Most of our road provisions have problems because of incorrect pricing. There are two primary (direct) costs associated with transportation facilities; construction and maintenance costs. Indirect costs associated with transportation facilities are congestion and air pollution. Development impact fees could be calculated based on a number of important factors: 1) Does the new transportation facility and the new development contribute to "sprawl"- lower population/land-use densities over a larger area? 2) Will the transportation facility and development help increase or decrease vehicle miles traveled (VMT) over-all in an area? 3) To what degree does the new transportation facility accommodate/provide for alternative means of transportation? I believe that answers to these questions should help calculate equitable impact fees.

Anonymous
I suppose, theoretically, if a developer wanted his project badly enough
he'd be willing to pay whatever it takes (in other words, the "throw
money at it" method of problem-solving). But in practice, I don't find
that to be the case. For one thing, few developers are able to front
the kind of money transportation improvements require on their own, and
lenders won't underwrite such magnanimous gestures. To me, the real
bottom line is that developers want to pay for only what will benefit
their development, and no more. Even under established impact fee
programs, I've seen developers attempt to argue their way out of such
exactions because they don't perceive any benefit of that payment for
the end user of the project. Similarly, if someone pays full freight
then they seem to expect full benefit. Given the nature of
transportation connections, creating improvements that benefit solely
one development is an unlikely prospect.

Rich Carson
Clark County
In this county the developers are paying their fair share. However, by state
law we cannot charge them more than that. The problem is we can't get the
public to fund their fair share. So we find we don't have the public
matching funds to build new infrastructure.

Brad Collins
City of Port Angeles
Developers will follow the traditional political process, known as begging for public support either in the form of financial subsidy or lower standards. For large developments with improved tax base implications, this is very effective. For most other developments, there is the hope that consistency in ignoring standards will be passed along to their benefit. When the development market is strong enough, developers will front end some of the public facilities costs, if they can either limit their exposure or get back costs benefiting other developments. The problem with the latter approach is similar to a pyramid scheme - those that come along later in the development boom may not recover their costs.

Pete Swensson
Thurston County
I think the traffic concurrency system would work a lot better if it
was set up mutually among local governments through their Regional
Transportation Planning Organizations (RTPOs), which are set up under
the GMA. As part of this RTPO process, they could hammer out (and it
would involve a lot of hammering, cussing and discussing) a consistent
impact mitigation financing method, be it impact fees, TIBDs, SEPA, or
whatever. This would not be perfect, since RTPOs are not really as
large as the "traffic shed" that would be affected. People increasingly
travel across county lines to work, shop, etc. while RTPOs are mostly
one-county entities.

Developers are always willing to pay more if they can do so and still
find a market for their product. If they can't, they move down the road
to another jurisdiction where they can sell their product for what it
costs plus a return on their investment commensurate with their level of
risk. We can see this in action all the time: the market supports
small, expensive condos in Seattle and close-in suburbs like Kirkland,
where costs are high but demand and incomes are high too. So high
exaction costs can be built into the cost of the product and developers
will still "pay to play." But in smaller communities like Thurston
County, if costs are too high for them, developers will go farther and
farther away to build housing, including Mason and Lewis Counties. The
same factors affect commercial development, though it seems to me to be
less sensitive to exactions -- other location factors like size of the
local trade area seem to be more important. Perhaps exactions are a
smaller share of their development costs.

New development should not pay the full cost. It should pay its full
proportionate share of the cost. Some costs come from lifestyles of the
general public, such as more cars per household. The general rise in
"background" traffic volumes should be paid by general taxpayers.
Grants coming from gas tax resources are one very appropriate (but
declining) source for these dollars. However, if every new development
paid its full proportionate share of the costs of new facility needs --
not just on facilities in its jurisdiction, but on all that it impacts
-- the share imposed on general taxpayers would be a lot less.

Roger Wagoner
Berryman & Henigar
See 1. You have to consider the local culture, political sensibility, and attitude about growth for EACH community. There is no "one-size-fits-all" approach. Developers will usually pay "full" costs if 1) they are being treated fairly; 2) they are
assured that the jurisdiction will deliver in constructing the improvements on-time; and 3) the "full" costs do not drive the price of the product beyond what the market can bear. Bottom line: If a jurisdiction has significant EXISTING shortfalls, full
concurrency participation on the part of new growth will never resolve that issue. In the old pre-GMA days, it was possible for new growth to pay for past sins, but no longer.

Rita Robinson
Washington State Office of Community Development
Impose impact fees. Raise taxes. Some communities, e.g., Mill Creek, ask developers to pay for infrastructure.

Mary Lynne Evans
Snohomish County
Developers/developments are only half of the problem. If there were no demand for "sprawl" it would not occur. Local governments should levy road maintenance taxes based on vehicle miles traveled by households. Lower vehicle miles traveled would equal a lower tax and would eventually encourage changes in land use, i.e. having higher density communities with jobs and services closer by and perhaps a greater demand for alternative forms of transportation. Developer costs should increase if their projects contribute to "sprawl"- lower population/land-use densities over a larger area and encourage increases vehicle miles traveled (VMT) over-all in an area?