Atherton: Paying more for damage to roads Atherton: Paying more for damage to roads (March 30, 2005)

By Andrea Gemmet

Almanac Staff Writer

The cost of construction in Atherton is going up, but on the bright side, the roads leading to those new and remodeled homes ought to get a little less bumpy.

To keep up with the cost of repairing Atherton streets, the City Council approved on March 16 increases in the road-impact fees charged to builders.

Road-impact fees must be directly related to the cost of repairing road damage caused by construction vehicles. With large basements an increasingly popular feature of new homes, Atherton officials said the existing fee structure wasn't keeping up with the growing costs of road repairs.

A new study commissioned by the town found that passenger vehicles have a negligible impact on roads, but that heavy construction vehicles -- and particularly trucks loaded with dirt from basement excavations -- are the major cause of wear and tear.

Almost 87.5 percent of the damage is due to construction vehicle traffic, and the remaining 12.5 percent to garbage trucks, according to consultants Kimley Horn and Associates.

The study also found Atherton suffers nearly $1.5 million in construction vehicle-caused damage to its roads annually.

"Cars can run down a road forever without any impact to the (road's) subbase, but when a truck goes fully loaded down the road, the impact goes really deep," said Public Works Director Duncan Jones.

To raise money for the increased amount of road damage, residential construction projects will be charged 0.71 percent of the construction's permitted value, up from 0.5 percent. Excavation projects must now pay a surcharge of $22 per cubic yard of off-hauled earth.

The higher fees can mean the difference of a couple of thousand dollars for a new 4,000-square-foot home with no basement to nearly double that cost if a basement is included.

Under the existing fee structures, such a home would be charged about $18,600 for permits, licenses and fees, including the road impact fee.

With the newly approved road-impact fees, a 4,000-square-foot home with no basement would run up $20,691 in licenses, permits and fees. That cost rises to nearly $37,000 if the home includes a full basement.

City Manager Jim Robinson said that, despite sending out notices to construction industry representatives, no one showed up at the March 16 meeting to oppose the higher fees.

The vote in favor of the changes was 5-0. The City Council plans to consider imposing excavation and road impact fees on major landscaping projects at a future meeting.

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