Tag: TIA

Making Progress on Transportation

Posted on by Marc Seelinger

An update from our workshop on Monday:

We had a very productive conversation around our traffic impact ordinance with the Planning Board, NCDOT, Kimley Horn, and Rep. John Torbett. We decided to explore some adjustments to our ordinance (specifically around in-lieu payments) in order to ensure that we are quantifying traffic mitigation needs consistently from project to project.

In situations where a developer is required (by our ordinance) to provide traffic mitigation measures but is unable to do so (most commonly because the developer doesn’t own the land where the improvements need to be made), our ordinance allows the developer to make a payment to the city in-lieu of providing the required mitigation. However, our ordinance does not currently provide very clear guidance on how that payment should be calculated. One solution we talked through was creating a formula that accounts for all the costs associated with providing the improvement – everything from land acquisition to attorney fees to a growth rate (to account for inflation). The Planning Board will be taking a deeper dive into this over the next few weeks/months.

We also discussed ongoing legal threats to the TIA process in general. In particular, there is a case in Mooresville (currently on appeal) that was decided against the town and centers around the ability to require off-site traffic mitigation. While the NC statutes are fairly clear on our ability to require on-site improvements (i.e. on the land that the developer actually owns), it is less clear on our ability to require off-site improvements (as when a large development impacts not only the immediate roads around the development, but also intersections down the street, etc.).

So, city staff and legal counsel will be working with our legislative delegation to see if there is a way to provide some additional clarification in the law so that this does not become an issue for us down the road. Owing to our unique traffic circumstances (especially on the peninsula), I suggested that we look at obtaining a “Local Act” that would apply just to Belmont. Because they do not affect the whole state, Local Acts/Bills don’t require the governor’s signature to become law and the general custom of the General Assembly is to allow these bills to become law so long as the entire relevant legislative delegation is on board. I think given the situation on South Point Road, we need to be able to continue using the TIA to manage our growth in a sustainable manner. So, I am hopeful that we will be able to work out a solution with our representatives in Raleigh.

Belmont Transportation Planning

Posted on by Marc Seelinger
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The next City Council workshop is tomorrow at 4pm at CityWorks. You can find the agenda and link to the livestream here: https://buff.ly/3jNFKAn

The workshop will be a joint meeting between City Council, the Planning Board, NCDOT, Kimley Horn (the city’s consultant for traffic impact analysis studies), and members from our legislative delegation to discuss our traffic impact analysis (TIA) ordinance. The way our ordinance currently works, only developments that generate a certain level of new traffic are required to implement mitigation measures through the TIA process. So, if a development is small enough that it does not create enough new traffic, it does not need to go through the full TIA process. However, there is some concern that this could lead to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation, where in a series of smaller development projects, no one project generates significant traffic, but collectively they create the kind of traffic degradation you would normally see from one large project. So, we want to ensure that our planning process accounts for that and think through some ways of addressing that problem.

In addition, recently, in other parts of the state, there have been some lawsuits filed by developers against municipalities challenging the cities’ authority to require traffic mitigation measures as part of the development process. The success of these lawsuits would make it impossible for Belmont to continue using our TIA process as we have and severely handcuff our ability to manage growth in a responsible and sustainable way. So, we are proactively involving our representatives in Raleigh to ensure that they are aware of the success that we have had with our TIA process and understand how important it is to protect this very important tool. We want to be prepared in case these lawsuits are successful against the other municipalities.

It should be a very interesting workshop! If you have any questions, let me know!