Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Vmt Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Humboldt County Planning Commission adopts VMT threshold policy after heated debate over baseline
Summary
The planning commission approved a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) threshold policy to guide CEQA review and screening criteria, endorsing staff edits but leaving a split recommendation to supervisors on whether to use an unincorporated (22.1 mi/resident) or countywide baseline. Public commenters and commissioners disagreed on data granularity and impacts to rural development.
The Humboldt County Planning Commission voted to adopt a draft Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) threshold policy with staff‑recommended edits after a lengthy presentation, public comment and commissioner debate.
Staff presenter Megan Acevedo summarized the policy’s purpose and legal context, telling commissioners that “SB 743 was signed into law in 2013 and fundamentally changed how local governments assess transportation impacts under CEQA by switching the primary metric from level of service to vehicle miles traveled.” The draft sets screening criteria (for example, small projects generating less than 110 trips per day would screen out) and recommended thresholds of significance equal to 15% below an established VMT baseline for residential and employment projects.
Staff said the unincorporated‑county baseline averages are 22.1 miles per resident per day and 14.7 miles per employee per day; countywide averages that include incorporated cities are 20.1 miles per resident and 13.2 per employee. The recommended significance rule is 85% of whichever baseline the county adopts.
Public commenters presented competing views. Matt Simmons, an attorney for the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), said EPIC “supports a minus 15% threshold for VMT for residential land use projects” but urged use of more localized baselines and tools such as the VMT Plus tool to avoid averaging away important local differences. Praj White, a land‑use practitioner, said he supported the policy as written and backed the staff’s use of unincorporated averages while urging the commission to consider how screening affects housing projects.
Commissioners debated multiple tradeoffs at length: whether baselines should be countywide or unincorporated, whether very rural block groups with low measured VMT should be excluded from map‑based screening, and how mitigation credits should be quantified. Several commissioners stressed that overly granular localized baselines can make screening more stringent because an area would be compared to itself, while others argued countywide averages spread responsibility more evenly across the region.
On mitigation, commissioners asked staff to rely on the CAPCOA (California Air Pollution Control Officers Association) handbook for quantifying reductions and to embed or link to the handbook rather than extract selected figures. Staff agreed to reference the handbook and to remove mitigation recommendations—such as cleaner fuel vehicles—that do not reduce VMT, and to add language about reassessing the baseline in 2030.
A motion to adopt the policy guidelines as presented, with the staff changes discussed at the meeting, passed on a voice vote. Commissioners noted they were deadlocked on which baseline to recommend; staff will present both alternatives (the unincorporated baseline and the countywide baseline) and the differing rationales in the report to the Board of Supervisors. The commission recorded opposition from one commissioner and multiple affirmative votes; the motion carried.
The commission also agreed to schedule additional hearings to consider two large upcoming items, including the Regional Climate Action Plan. Staff identified June 26 as a likely date for an extra meeting.
What happens next: staff will finalize the policy text to incorporate the edits discussed at the meeting, remove certain rural block groups from screening maps, embed CAPCOA guidance by reference, note a reassessment date (2030), and forward the policy with both baseline options to the Board of Supervisors for a final decision.
