As street fee continues to plague Portland, Hillsboro revisits the issue of raising its own

Road maintenance fee

Hillsboro residents might have to pay more for roads come April.

(The Oregonian)

Hillsboro transportation officials on Wednesday revisited the issue of increasing the city's street fee, now that they know they won't receive the annual $1.46 million they'd have gotten for roads if voters had approved Washington County's proposed $30 yearly vehicle registration fee last month.

City residents currently pay $3.18 for the monthly street fee – officially dubbed the Transportation Utility Fee – which helps fund Hillsboro's Pavement Management Program. But Engineering Project Manager Tina Bailey said the city is behind on road maintenance, and backlogs will continue to increase under the present revenue structure.

On Wednesday night, Hillsboro's transportation committee weighed several options for increasing the fee and settled on a scenario that would raise residential rates to $4.64 per month in fiscal year 2015-16 and $7.56 per month by 2017-18, with a 6 percent annual increase after that.

The new scenario would also charge non-residential customers – read: businesses – the residential rate plus an additional amount based on their size. Many smaller businesses would pay as little as an additional $2 per month in the first year, while companies the size of Intel would pay hundreds of extra dollars per month.

The Pavement Management Program would also draw funding from a $500,000 annual contribution from the city's transportation fund, which comes from Oregon's gas tax and Transportation Investment Act, and a $1 million annual contribution from the Strategic Investment Program, the state initiative under which companies like Intel avoid paying property taxes on equipment.

The committee also recommended that the city change the way it divides residents' and non-residents' share of the revenue generated by the street fee. Currently, 52 percent of the revenue comes from residents, and 48 percent from non-residents. That's based on a Metro formula that doesn't use data for local and neighborhood routes, which account for the majority of Hillsboro's network, Bailey said.

The new formula would require residents to pay for local residential streets and alleys and non-residents to pay for local commercial and industrial streets. Arterials, collectors and neighborhood routes would be split between the two groups. That results in a new split between residents and non-residents: 75 percent of the share would come from residents under the new formula.

City staff came up with the proposal after hearing feedback from the Transportation Utility Fee Advisory Committee, which consists of members from different constituent groups from around the city. But at the advisory committee's most recent meeting, Bailey said, the only two members who showed up were from the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce.

In a letter to the city, Chamber President Deanna Palm supported the 75-25 split and also said the chamber would support a "4 percent increase" in the street fee. Of the three options the city was considering, Palm said, the chamber would support the "least impactful option." The transportation committee settled on the middle option – all three members said the least impactful option would be "kicking the can down the road" because it would fail to keep up with backlogs.

Though she ultimately supported the recommendation, City Council President (and transportation committee chair) Aron Carleson expressed reservations about the new split, suspecting it might put too much of a burden on residents, when many of the workers at the businesses benefitting from the transportation system do not live in the city.

"I just am not comfortable listing it that way," she said. (The meeting was her last as a city councilor; she will be term-limited and replaced by Kyle Allen come January.)

Next month, the Hillsboro City Council is expected to set a public hearing regarding the fee increase for Feb. 3. The increase would go into effect in April.

This year, the city also decided to raise water, stormwater and sewer rates.

-- Luke Hammill

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