Features

At last Thursday’s Berkeley Transportation Commission meeting, the board unanimously passed a motion asking for a transportation services fee (TSF) to be approved by the City Council at its July 11 meeting. 

A second motion proposed that the fee not be assessed for the first six months after adoption, with one-third of the fee assessed during the following six months and two- thirds of the fee assessed in the next 12 months. After this 30-month adoption period the fee would be assessed in full. 

The TSF as originally proposed by city staff would be assessed on projects that generated new floor area over 1,000 square feet or on changes of use in major commercial districts that require an administrative use permit (AUP) or use permit (UP). The TSF would not be assessed on most changes of use (in which no additional floor area over 1,000 square feet is created) in neighborhood commercial districts, but would be assessed on residential projects if they created additional dwelling units. Affordable housing would be potentially exempted.  

Roland Peterson of Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District spoke against the TSF proposal. He pointed out that Telegraph Avenue currently had a very high level of commercial vacancies, and said that implementing the TSF would harm new businesses that were trying to move in. He gave the example of Blockbuster Video on Durant, which had been turned into a retail store and is currently vacant. 

Berkeley resident Claire Risley spoke in favor of the fee. “Discounts should be offered to people who use alternate forms of transit like bikes or walk. This is not a fantasy idea, a lot of cities are implementing it,” she said. 

Planning Commission Chair Rob Wrenn said that uncertainty about the kind of retail outlet affected could lead to the fee being tweaked. He also said that the fee would not affect stores that went from higher to lower levels of business.  

Transportation staffer Kara Vuicich rejected the idea of collecting fees in installments. They said that even though cities such as San Francisco collect large fees in installments, Berkeley did not have to do the same. “Our main aim is collection; we do not want the city’s resources wasted on collecting fees,” the staff said. 

Board members also stressed the fact that they wanted to make the fee as simple as possible so that business owners would be able to understand it and calculate their own fee without any problems.  

Board member Wendy Alfsen reminded fellow commissioners that a lot of jurisdictions that are more conservative than Berkeley had already implemented a TSF, and so it would not be a revolutionary move.  

UC Berkeley/City of Berkeley Long Range Development Plan Agreement 

Regarding the $200,000 payment that UC Berkeley provides annually to the City of Berkeley as part of a settlement agreement, Commission Chair Rob Wrenn said that there had still not been any decisions on what the TDM (Transportation Development Management) funds would be used for. He said that the exact nature of the use of the funds for the joint UC and city transportation development management and pedestrian improvement programs would be decided by the transportation commission subcommittee at the next meeting. 

Grants and staffing 

The board also voted in favor of the City Council adding a new staff position.  

Matthew Nichols, principal planner at Berkeley’s Office of Transportation, told the Daily Planet that “in view of the extraordinarily high number of grant applications that the Transportation Division of the Department of Public Works had developed, and the fact that these efforts have resulted in almost $9 million in funding to the city in financial year 2005-06, there is an immediate need for someone to take care of this.” Nichols, who is currently responsible for grants in the Office of Transportation, also stressed the need for someone to adequately carry out future fundraising and grant management projects, as well as bicycle, pedestrian, transit, traffic calming and TDM activities. Wendy Alfsen invited suggestions from the public about how this money could be prioritized. 

Traffic Analysis for MLK/University (Trader Joe’s) was taken off the agenda for the evening..