What?  I don't understand what you mean.  Are you saying the fees will be 100% this year, then 90% next year and the year after that.  What?

The fees will be 90 percent this year, and then 100 percent every year after that. Except that the council could always extend the discount by another year, which drives up the amount needed later. Couch said the fee could be extended over and over, keeping it at the 90 percent rate.

A listing of the development impact fees of the last ten years would help show everyone how we accumulated such a deficit. and find ourselves struggling to raise matching amounts for TRIP money. 

According to Gary Crabtree, local real estate expert, the 38,400 vested existing residential lots, which will pay about $7,000 per home instead of the new fee of ~$12,000, would have produced $192,000,000 for the City of Bakersfield.  That, boys and girls, is how governmental entities accrue deficits, and why those governments have to come back to taxpayers to bailout their lousy planning and management.  And, too, it doesn't help when the operating budget is robbed to support development infrastructure, neglecting the repair, maintenance and reconstruction of existing facilities because they don't have the funds. 

Ever wonder why it costs more to live in a city instead of on a nice little rural farmette?  The above scenario is part of the reason. 

Obviously, there are more complexities to consider, but not making growth pay for most of itself is a large part of the problem.

Councilman Couch voted correctly.

And we need 38,400 additional lots in Bakersfield for what reason? Please take a good look around at the vacant homes in your neighborhoods, at the growing vacancies in all strip centers, at the continual vacant and blighted downtown, and at the many vacant lots that have sat for decades while a hodge podge mix of new development without a plan has expanded our little dust bowl into prime agricultural land. Take a look a zillow.com and check your own plummeting property value and ask yourself if we need an additional 38,4000 additional lots here in Bakersfield.

What Bakersfield needs is a building moratorium!

If our elected officials didn't have the political guts to assess adequate development impact fees, then why would they ever consider a building moratorium.  The need is for us to have some different and less politically obligated elected officials (and the entrenched local administrations).  But with no qualified people willing to challenge the elected status quo politicos and their special interests I don't see how any substantive changes and corrections will occur.

Better needed would be a moratorium on our apathy, complacency and lack of willingness to be involved and serve.  

reformer

I couldn't agree with you more about our apathy.  People love to criticize and "rage" against the system - yet, those same people would not put themselves in the political arena.

Sadly,  there is such a price to pay when you put yourself in the public arena.  People look for the first misstep and then they throw you to the lions. Personal lives become public conversation - ask  Mrs. Palin.   People even questioned whether or not her youngest child was actually her own.  Why people step into the political arena is beyond me - there is always someone waiting to take them down.  Right or wrong - there is always a critic.

Adampayne

Those lots were mapped when the real estate boom was booming.  Now that the boom has fizzled there is an overstock of lots.  The fizzled market has created it's own building moratorium. 

There was no way to sustain the boom given the prevailing wages in this county. Everyone knew that to be the case. Everyone did not know that interest only and superinflated jumbo mortgages were being packaged as the highest quality securities and being sold to investors around the world. There is not a moratorium today, and very low building is not the same as no building. If a moratorium were in place  property values would be begin to rebound and sales of existing inventory would accelerate.

This county has done a terrible job of infilling and of planned growth with smart land use. The whole issue of road connectivity has been at cross purposes with the ad hoc development approvals that got rubber stamped through the years. It is not too late to formulate a better general plan utilizing mixed uses of residential and commercial with better public transportation options and more bike paths.

You have said it all   - poor planning  and lack of  insight  concerning infrastructure - roads, mass transit, etc..   Now we must all pay for those decisions made by  Planning Commissioners, Council members and Supervisors of the past.