All this time I have been railing against the city council for giving up Quimby Fees in exchange for Private Parks and Private Open Space for Recreation. I was wrong and must apologize for that, you can’t give up what you don’t collect.
The City of Wildomar COLLECTS NO QUIMBY FEES. Why you ask
Apparently in the haste of incorporation when Wildomar accepted 3 parks from the County of Riverside and the LMD 2006-1 funding mechanism for said parks on July 1, 2008 6.4.2 Resolution #08-41 they removed themselves from the County of Riverside Parks and Open Space District and failed to update whatever General Plan they might be using with a Master Plan for Community Recreation and Parks, despite what one councilwoman claims, thereby designating an entity to accept these funds and determine how they would be spent as required by Quimby Act 66477. Also stated in the City of Wildomar 2012 Impact Fee Study Report Draft April 20, 2012 by Colgan Consulting Corporation. "Before imposing these requirements, the City must have adopted a general plan or specific plan containing policies and standards for parks and recreation facilities". NO PLAN NO FEE
Currently the City of Wildomar is collecting $418.50 per Residential Single Family Unit listed in the budget as Regional Parks DIF of which the city has $26,400 currently in the account, they project an increase to $169,000 for 2013-2014 which equates to about 400 homes. Had we had a Master Parks Plan and were able to collect the Quimby Fee those 400 homes would bring in approximately $930,000 based on the $2,325 fee recommended by the 2012 study. The City of Menifee collects both a Regional Parks fee of $563 and a Quimby fee of $2,590, the City of Murrieta collects a Park Land Facilities fee of $3,828, the City of Temecula a Quimby fee of $4,836 even Lake Elsinore collects a park fee of $1,600 plus a marina facilities fee of $779 because they all have a Parks Plan.For a city council of which 3 members have expressed support for parks during their campaigns and all 5 supported two different ballot measures along with spending 10's of thousands of dollars of the taxpayers money to convince the voters to fund parks this is reprehensible. A master parks plan in Elk Grove took 20 months to develop, funny thing about that plan it was developed after their former city manager came to Wildomar (not the current city manager). Its been 5 years since Wildomar has collected a Quimby Fee and with another 20 months to come up with a plan we are going to have lost million
This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.
The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?
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