Item B: Strategies for Long-Term Transportation Needs

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ATTACHMENT C Street Lighting Fees Brief Description of Fees, levied on occupants of properties benefited by the city’s Funding Option street lighting services, to fund operation, maintenance and enhancement of the city’s street lighting system. Fee revenue would be accounted for in a separate fund and dedicated to provision of street lighting. Precedence (other The Oregon cities of Nyssa, Klamath Falls and Wilsonville jurisdictions’ practices) currently levy fees for street lighting. Calculation Base and The City of Eugene expects to spend about $800,000 to Typical Rates operate and maintain the city’s street lighting system in FY07 at the current level of service. Of this total, about $440,000 is for lighting on arterial/collector streets, and $360,000 is for lighting on neighborhood streets. An additional amount will be needed to cover fee administration and collection costs. Final administrative costs will depend upon whether the method of assessment is simple or complex and how the fee is collected. This estimate assumes a fairly simple fee is implemented, which still differentiates among levels of service. The most efficient way to collect this fee will be to include it in billings for the city’s wastewater fee. All properties with active water accounts receive wastewater billings. In this example the fee would have three components: a citywide base assessment for lighting services on arterial/collector streets reflecting citywide benefits of those services, a citywide component covering fee administration and collection costs, and a local area lighting assessment reflecting the level of service on neighborhood streets. There could be several different local assessment areas reflecting substantially different levels of local lighting service. With this assessment methodology administrative and fee collection costs are estimated to be about $200,000. There will be about 58,000 active water accounts in the city in FY07, so the average total monthly fee would be about $1.44 per month. However the amount actually assessed on a particular property’s occupant would be higher or lower depending on the local area lighting service level. Using FY07 estimated street lighting costs, under this three component approach the citywide base fee for arterial and collector street lighting would be about $0.63, and the citywide administrative component would be about $0.29. Depending on the level of local area lighting service, the local service assessment would range from zero (for no local lighting services at all) to a level reflecting the highest level of local service, with an average of $0.52.