Roseville receives update on transportation sales tax measure

Roseville City Council received an update on the South Placer County Transportation Sales Tax Measure from the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency during the council's Wednesday meeting. The Placer County Transportation Planning Agency is a regional agency that oversees and plans all the transportation projects in Placer County. First, Placer County Transportation Planning Agency Executive Director Mike Luken outlined the transportation challenges in south Placer. "Not only are we a fast-growing community in south Placer, we have to provide all forms of transportation so a lot of our work plan is related to roads as a suburban community but we have a tremendous amount of transit and bicycle and pedestrian projects that we need to work on in the coming years," Luken said. Another issue south Placer faces is a structural deficit in transportation funding, according to Luken. "We're not any different than any of the other 58 counties (in California)," Luken said. "The only reason we're different is that unlike 25 of those counties, we're not what's called a 'self help county,' and that means that we don't have means to fund the local share of transportation (for public safety and transportation needs in the community)." Luken stated that south Placer needs about $3 billion to implement new transportation projects over the next three decades. About $2 billion of that comes from new development, according to Luken, which leaves the remaining $1 billion unfunded which is needed to improve transportation. In past decades, Luken said, the state and federal government provided 90 percent of the necessary funding for transportation needs, and local governments only needed to provide 10 percent of the remaining funds. But in the last 15 years, Luken said, there is a 40-percent funding gap for transportation, since the state and federal government now only provides 50 percent of funding. Luken explained that the lack of funding is due to "competition" of other agencies and organizations that need funding to resolve other issues affecting public communities. For south Placer, the state and federal government's funding will help improve public transit, pedestrian safety, local congestion management, and road and bridge maintenance. This leaves funding still needed to improve Placer Parkway, interchange improvements for I-80 and Highway 65, widending for Highway 65, and Horseshoe Bar or Nelson Lane improvements. For the last four years, the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency has conducted public outreach and explained the need for additional transportation funding by reviewing expenditure plans, holding community meetings throughout Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln, and other forms of communications. Moving forward, Luken said, the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency will continue its outreach to 2024. According to Placer County Transportation Planning Agency Deputy Executive Director Rick Carter, whether the measure will be on the 2024 ballot has yet to be decided by the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency Board of Directors. "We're going to concentrate down to the general public who appear to have the least amount of knowledge about transportation funding," Luken said. "We're actually going to do 36 (community) meetings next year in Lincoln, Rocklin and Roseville. We will really be hitting each part of the community quarterly and why that's important is because transportation planning and funding is complex." Because this was a presentation for the Roseville City Council, no vote or action was taken. In other news Roseville Vice Mayor Bruce Houdesheldt reintroduced Senate Bill 1383 from the city's consent calendar during Wednesday's City Council meeting with the hope of adopting an ordinance to replace Title 9.12 of Roseville's Municipal Code. According to Houdesheldt, the purpose of adopting the ordinance is to conform with the requirements of Senate Bill 1383 in regard to short-lived climate pollutants and California Recycle Support and California Recycles Organics Regulation. Senate Bill 1383 is correlated to Roseville's Municipal Code amendments. According to Roseville Assistant Director of Environmental Utilities Devin Woodington, Senate Bill 1383 was approved by California legislation in 2016. California State Legislatures states that Senate Bill 1383 was enacted to reduce the environmental impacts caused by the release of methane emissions from organic materials decomposing in landfills, as well as to increase statewide edible-food recovery efforts. In 2020, final regulations were adopted to the bill, according to Woodington. "These regulations will require jurisdictions such as Roseville to divert 50 percent of all organic waste by 2025 and 75 percent after 2025," Woodington said. "The regulation also requires that jurisdictions like Roseville adopt an enforceable mechanism." The "mechanism" Woodington referred to is a municipal code that he was presenting to City Council for approval. "The reason for the urgency on this issue is because there is $193,000 available to the city if we execute this ordinance before June 14," Woodington shared with the council. Woodington also reported that the Western Placer Waste Management Authority and the flow control commitment are a "defined collection system" ready to go into effect to benefit the south Placer communities and improve environmental matters throughout Roseville. After a year of work and progress, Woodington said, the ordinance is ready for council approval. Roseville City Council unanimously voted to adopt the ordinance, which will be immediately put into effect so that the city can receive the $193,000 before the June 14 deadline.