The owner of the proposed Briny Bagels is rising up against Bainbridge Island’s Traffic Impact Fees and the City Council seems to agree the law has holes in it.
Frank Giuliano says the city’s law has holes in it, as the Public Works Department has evaluated the business’s one-time fee at about $25,500, down from its original assessment of almost $31,800.
The proposed shop at 10255 NE Valley Road in Rolling Bay is 1,000 square feet, and open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Based on that the shop will not generate peak-hour trips from 4-6 p.m. on public streets.
If it does open for later hours, it would be subject to the fee, writes Jeffrey Hee, a senior transportation engineer with Transportation Solutions.
“This mismatch directly exempts us from these fees, according to city regulations,” Giuliano says in a letter to city manager Blair King.
In an email to Public Works director Chris Wierzbicki, Giuliano says the city’s formula for TIFs is $5,000 per PM peak-person trip. But Briny Bagels isn’t open during that time.
In an email to city engineer Paul Nyland, Giuliano says the “imposition of this fee appears to us to be a clear misapplication of the ordinance” as the goal is to manage peak-hour traffic congestion.
Giuliano says that if he had known the city was going to look at traffic impacts outside of the “peak hours” his initial investment decision would have changed, “as our additional financial burden would render our business model unfeasible.”
He goes on to say the regulations disproportionately impact new small businesses. “This creates an uneven playing field so the city can’t “foster a diverse and vibrant small-business ecosystem.”
In a presentation to the City Council June 18, Wierzbicki said the impact fees are charged to help pay for the increase in demand for services that will due to new development. The money can be used for: streets, parks, school facilities, fire protection, etc. The fees are collected during the issuance of a permit. BI has never had impact fees for parks or fire protection; traffic fees have been charged since 2015; and fees for schools were in place from 1993-2011.
Last September, the city changed its traffic fee from $1,810 per vehicle trip to $5,000 per person trip. Compared to dozens of other cities in the state, the traffic fee on BI is near the bottom at $1,726, while the average is $4,744. Sammamish is at the top at well over $14,000. From June of 2021-24 traffic impact fees have brought in $470,000, with $60,000 coming from residential and the rest retail-commercial.
Next steps could include: a new chart just for Winslow; charge just one TIF; have a blanket reduction for Winslow redevelopment; and explicitly using peak times in the determination.
After a long discussion, King said city staff will bring back some recommendations.
The council in the talks seemed to be in favor of giving small businesses a break. They also seemed to favor charging the fees initially but not when a business is redeveloped.
Councilmember Kirsten Hytopoulos said the fees are charged only when a permit is applied for. So that’s unfair to a business that might get more business than the previous one, but didn’t have to apply for a permit.
“That’s an interesting point. That’s rare but could potentially happen,” Wierzbicki said.
“My gut feeling is something is fundamentally wrong,” Hytopoulos said, adding traffic should dramatically increase before heavy fees are charged for a business.
Wierzbicki said businesses can have a trip analysis done to get a reduction in fees. An example would be a neighborhood grocery store rather than a chain one. “We’re not a Safeway, we’re more like this,” he said.
“The fee needs to be the right size for the conditions,” deputy mayor Jon Quitslund said, adding he’d like to see the fee charged only when a businesses is beginning. “It’s part of the cost of just getting started.”
He said the city needs to avoid charges that “look like too much of a burden” and fees that “look arbitrary and capricious.”
