Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Humboldt county is advancing a policy to reduce vehicle miles traveled and the Planning Commission is split on the fundamental question of how existing levels should be defined.
A state law, Senate Bill 743, has changed the way transportation impacts are analyzed, part of achieving the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The impacts are now gauged using using vehicle miles traveled as a basis rather than factors like traffic congestion. The county's impact analyses are done on a case by case basis now, but that will change and the commission reviewed a draft vehicle miles traveled policy at its May 1 meeting.
The threshold for defining significant VMT impact is based on current levels. In Humboldt cities, there's less VMT and the county has a choice between using the entire county, including cities, to define a baseline or existing level or to focus on the unincorporated county controlled area as recommended by staff.
County planner Megan Acevedo detailed the per trip differences between the unincorporated county area and the county wide area including including cities.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: For unincorporated Humboldt county, the average VMT per resident was 22.1 miles per day and the average BMT per employee was 14.7 miles per day. The streetlight data also identified the countywide averages, including data for the incorporated cities. These averages were found to be 20.1 miles per resident per day and 13.2 miles per employee per day. The county has the option to use the unincorporated county averages or the county wide averages, including the cities, to set a baseline and threshold in the draft policy.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: A development project's VMT impact is considered significant if its per resident or per Employee VMT is 85% or more of the county's average. The commission debated whether or not to include cities, which would lower the overall baseline.
There was doubt about whether the policy's VMT baselines are accurate. It's important because the lower the baseline, the more likely projects will be required to mitigate VMT impacts. Commissioner Thomas Mulder said southern Humboldt is particularly doubtful of the baselines.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: I mean I've heard arguments down in southern Humboldt that this number is like horrible. It should be 30, 35, maybe even 40.
So we're both here different sides of the spectrum. I think this number is somewhere in the middle. People could easily argue one way or the other. But the thing I really want to get back to are we a county and making a countywide policy or are we putting in a petition to split this county up? That's kind of like the more centralized data or I guess maybe is the goal the policy really to make sure there's an EIR for every single project that comes before this county because all the time that I've been on the commission, I know we have, you know, development after development coming forward. So we may want to think about setting policy that encourages that development to come in the door rather than to a different county.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: But Commissioner Jerome Kiriazzi said significant work will have to be done on a community wide scale and permitting of development should match it.
Commissioner Noah Levy said using the unincorporated area's VMT level with a lower baseline would screen out too much of the county from impact analysis.
[00:03:56] Speaker D: There's places where if we set the threshold so that just say McKinleyville mostly screens out, do we then lose the opportunity to incentivize doing some of the things that they nevertheless could do on a development in McKinleyville? That would be mitigations that would further reduce the actual need for driving.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Commission Chair Ivor Skavdal said using the countywide baseline will trigger VMT mitigations in areas where development should be encouraged. And if we keep thinking that we're going to put another straw in the camel's back of the developer every single time in order to improve the environment in some way, we're just piling more on the camel that's already got a broken back.
With one commissioner absent, the six members of the commission gave up on trying to forge a majority straw vote on the scope of the total VMT area.
The Commission voted unanimously, however, on recommending approval of the draft policy by the Board of Supervisors, with the caveat that there's division on what the baseline VMT should be in Eureka For KMUD News, this is Daniel Mintz.
