Santa Rosa weighs three options to meet regional TOC rules and win transit grants

Santa Rosa city staff presented a study session on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Transit-Oriented Communities policy and asked the City Council for direction on three options to secure incentive funding tied to TOC compliance.

Gabe Osborne, the city’s Director of Planning and Economic Development, described TOC as “a regional planning framework that…focuses on increasing housing density and commercial activity around transit hubs,” and said compliance can be voluntary but becomes mandatory to be competitive for regional grants. Amy Nicholson, a planning supervisor, told the council that Santa Rosa already scores well in station-access and circulation but needs roughly three additional points under MTC’s 100-point rubric; she warned that the incentive scoring requires documentation by July 1, leaving roughly 11 months to complete any local actions. “Because this incentive money is tied to a funding cycle…any of the work that needs to be verified or adopted must be done by July 1,” Nicholson said.

Staff framed three discrete program paths: (1) parking maximums, which cap parking supply for new development and can yield between 1 and 8 points depending on scope; (2) a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) program that would require larger projects to select from a menu of measures (transit passes, bicycle parking, on-site childcare, etc.) to reach a points threshold; and (3) a ministerial housing ordinance that would allow qualifying affordable projects to be reviewed as objective, ministerial approvals and could be worth about four points if applied to projects with a minimum share (staff proposed 15% affordable units as a baseline).

Staff told the council that parking maximums and a TDM program are likely feasible within the short timeframe and with existing consultant support (an MTC grant of approximately $150,000 covers consultant work on parking/TDM), while drafting a ministerial housing ordinance would require significantly more staff time and community engagement. Councilmembers generally signaled support for a middle-ground approach on parking maximums and expanding TDM beyond station areas to priority development areas, and asked staff to return with detailed code language, fiscal implications, and outreach plans.

Next steps: staff will prepare code amendments and implementation options for parking maximums and a draft TDM program with consultant support; the ministerial housing ordinance will be scheduled for a future study session to allow broader outreach and analysis.