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I live in Eugene’s suburbs, and I should pay more.
It’s not because I’m wealthy or deserve to be punished. It’s because the city is subsidizing low-density development when it can’t afford to.
It’s understood that Eugene has a structural budget problem. Since the 1990s, voter-approved measures 5 and 50 have limited the growth of property taxes to 3% per year. Each year inflation runs above 3%, the city budget shrinks in terms of buying power. This is the reason the city enacted a stormwater fee last year. Unfortunately, because of inflation, we have the same choice this year: cut services or increase revenue.
Before we make that choice, I want us to look at the report that prompted this article. The city commissioned it a few years ago to advise their long-term budget strategy. The analysis is from Urban3, a consultancy that specializes in mapping where cities make money and where they lose it. Here’s how they summarized their findings:
Urban3 found that Eugene’s development pattern is dominated by single family housing (80%) which generally runs at a slight deficit with regards to its ability to pay for infrastructure. Overall, this means that the city is not able to afford its infrastructure liability. We also found that denser, compact development and infill development not only pay for themselves, but also produce a surplus, which can offset the losses created by low-density development.
In plain terms: dense neighborhoods subsidize sprawl.
A transportation utility fee would begin to address this. These fees are well established in Oregon: Hillsboro, Bend, Creswell, Newberg and Oregon City all use them. These cities charge residents and businesses a monthly fee based on how much demand their property places on the road network. The reason this is classified as a fee and not a tax is because it’s a charge tied directly to the provision of a service. That’s important because fees, unlike taxes, can be established by council action without a public vote.
The standard methodology for determining road network demand uses the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation Manual, which estimates vehicle trips by land use type from decades of North American data. It’s a good foundation, but it was built around suburban development patterns. Researchers at Portland State University have shown that applying it without adjustment in walkable, transit-served urban settings can overestimate vehicle demand by more than 100%. Without adjustment, dense urban properties would be overcharged while car-dependent suburban development would be undercharged.
How far a property is from the city center, whether it’s near a transit line or a protected bike route, whether it mixes uses internally, all these affect road usage and need to be factored in. Success means properties that genuinely reduce city maintenance pay less, and those that require more pay more. In my opinion, we should ask people to pay for what they use. If we don’t, we will get unsustainable development that erodes our budget.
If Eugene wants to keep growing outward, that’s a legitimate choice. That said, we should be honest about the costs. Right now, low-density development in the outer neighborhoods is being subsidized by everyone else. A transportation utility fee ends that subsidy and asks everyone to pay their actual share.
I urge Eugene City Council to direct staff to develop a transportation utility fee proposal built on context-sensitive cost accounting. I wouldn’t be happy about paying more, but I think it would be the right thing to do.
