Staff previews $11M lifetime in transportation impact fees and planned 2026 code updates

Staff briefed the committee on the history and planned updates to Spokane's transportation impact fee program. The fee was adopted in 2010-11, updated in 2019 and 2023, and is collected at building permit to fund capacity improvements. To date the program has been used in portions of 28 projects and staff reported nearly $11 million collected over the life of the program.

Planned updates for 2026 include refreshing the project list to add several higher-cost items (including tunnel projects and new signals) now that preliminary engineering provides better cost estimates; staff said they will use the newest RTC travel model outputs and the latest (12th edition) manual data for the trip-rate calculations. The department also plans to consider multi-modal additions such as shared-use paths now allowed under changed state law.

Staff laid out a schedule: a Planning Commission kick-off in April, mayoral cabinet review in May, committee meetings from May through August, a planning commission hearing in the fall and council adoption later in the year. Staff noted some fund balances exceed $1 million and will coordinate allocations into the six-year plan and project prioritization.

Committee members asked about specific neighborhood projects where impact-fee match might apply, and staff noted prospective matches for grant applications (for example, sidewalk and intersection projects) and a likely first set of signal/intersection priorities in the near term. No formal action was recorded on the update during this committee meeting.