County Supervisor candidate Kyle Krahel wants the county to make it easier for developers to build.
That includes “right sizing” the county’s vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, policy, he said during Voice of San Diego’s Politifest North County event on Friday, Oct. 2.
Krahel is a Democrat running against Republican San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones for the District 5 seat on the Board of Supervisors.
A state law requires developers of projects in unincorporated areas to analyze vehicle miles traveled in an effort to reduce traffic, travel costs and greenhouse gas emissions. The more miles residents of these further out developments have to drive, the more developers have to do to offset the emissions caused by mileage. Things like building bike lanes or paying a large fee.
Krahel and many developers agree that the county’s VMT policy can be a major obstacle to building in the county’s unincorporated areas. That’s because it made it legally riskier and way more expensive to build.
“Let’s be honest we have a vehicle miles traveled policy that’s supposed to reduce driving and emissions and all it’s doing is driving people to buy homes in Riverside County,” he said. “That’s not an effective vehicle miles traveled policy.”
The county is currently using an exemption, known as 15183, that lets developers off the hook for VMT if their proposed project fits the standards set in the county’s general plan.
Though he doesn’t specifically know how he would want to change the policy yet, Krahel promised to gather stakeholders from the development community, environmental community, as well as local residents to improve it.
He also said he wants to streamline approvals of housing projects in general, creating easier processes for projects that already conform with the county’s general plan, as well as reducing duplicative environmental analyses.
And finally, he wants county leaders to be more strategic about building in unincorporated areas, proposing that the county prioritize building in communities that have a strong infrastructure system already in place, like in the village centers of Fallbrook or Valley Center, for example.
“These village centers are identified in the county plan, and when you go to the communities, you see they have their central urbanized core,” Krahel said. “That way we’re not having to spend huge amounts of money getting things like sewer lines out to greenfield developments.”