MAC Meeting: County Scolded for Squandering Fees

The Castro Valley Municipal Advisory Council (MAC) scolded the County for squandering over $1 million in developer fees that should have gone to local parks at this week’s meeting and approved a new concept that would give them more oversight in the future.

The County and The Hayward Area Recreation District (HARD) is in the process of asking all the area MACs for help best utilizing money they collect from new residential developments in the unincorporated area.

When a new housing project is approved, the developer either sets aside land for public recreation/ park use or --more commonly-- pays in-lieu fees which are to be used to improve park facilities in the HARD area.

However, the County reports that recently the collected fees have been languishing unspent and once they aren’t used or earmarked after a specific amount of time, they have to be refunded to developers, wasting resources.

“The crux of the issue is that the county has an ordinance and hasn’t done a great job (enforcing it),” said Albert Lopez, Alameda County Planning Director. “We have collected park fees and if we don't allocate or commit them in five years, they have to be refunded.”

Lopez told the MAC that the funds haven’t been used for a variety of reasons, including staff turnover, a lack of awareness of the existing policies and resources, and not following the advisory committee process, which he hopes to now rectify with further help from the local MACs.

The issue came to light in late 2023, when HARD requested funding from the county including $2.2 million for Bay Trees Park and Hillcrest Knolls Park in Castro Valley, $600,000 for Del Rey Park in San Lorenzo, and $200,000 for Lakeridge Park in Fairview.

Before this request, it had been several years since HARD had requested any funding and this prompted a review of the code that revealed that parts of the code hadn’t been implemented and that the County also has to process refunds of some of the fees, leaving the projects underfunded.

MAC member Tojo Thomas suggested a county staff member be dedicated to monitoring the money and making sure the MAC gets more regular updates.

MAC member Dan Davino said the funding mismanagement issue was “shocking to me.”

The balance of the funds after the refunds to developers/property owners now totals $2.75 million, split between different benefit areas in the unincorporated area. And around $1.4 million has to be refunded, and County staff anticipates that process will begin this month.

County staff is now visiting the CV MAC and the other MACs to request that the usable park in-lieu fees be spent and that the individual MACs make recommendations on the use of parks fees in the future so that funds are not wasted. Both requests were approved by the MAC on Monday night.

“This process was supposed to work relatively easily,” said Lopez. “I think it will work that way once we have the ordinances in place.”

In other MAC decisions, the council unanimously passed a Conditional Use Permit renewal for a T-Mobile wireless facility at 19300 Redwood Road- the Redwood Chapel Community Church.

The cell tower consists of six existing antennas inside a church steeple and is thus more unobtrusive than the poles and faux trees that eh MAC has had issues with in the past.

In fact, the MAC noted that they enjoyed the fact that it is “hidden in plain sight” and said it was a better proposal than others.

MAC Chair Chuck Moore said “I wish all of them were as pleasant as this one to look at.”

The MAC approved the permit unanimously, but Moore did ask that county staff prepare an inventory of the number and type of existing cell phone towers and when their permits are expiring and due for renewal, which County staff said will be put together and presented at a meeting in the future.

The MAC also approved a modification to the definition of swimming pools in the County Zoning Ordinance. Previously, the language of the ordinance had pools considered a “building” which counted towards the floor area ratio of a site, but the new language considers them an accessory structure. The matter will now go before other area MACs before adoption.