Recent Alameda County homeowners and developers will see thousands of dollars in payments after in-lieu fees for park maintenance went unspent by the county for more than five years.
But for community parks, the refund is nothing to celebrate.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted last week to return more than $1.5 million, and supervisors discussed upcoming legislation to give community volunteers more control over the allocation of in-lieu park fees in the future.
Parks fees are collected for each new home constructed by either a household or a housing developer as part of an effort to mitigate the impact of new park users on park and open space facilities. The refund include $726,404 from Hayward, more than $504,004 from Castro Valley, $108,804 from Fairview and $105,578 from Pleasanton among other sums. These fees must be returned by the county to the current property owner if they’re not spent within five years, according to the county’s rules.
“The last request for park fees was made by HARD (Hayward Area Recreation and Park District) in 2016, and during the interim, the park fees have continued to be collected with a substantial balance now of over $4 million,” according to county documents. “The bulk of the refunds are due to property owners in Castro Valley and Ashland/Cherryland/San Lorenzo, with smaller amounts due to other parts of the Eden Area, as well as East County.”
Refunds to households and developers range from $2,400 to $407,000, with the median refund being $9,000, according to a county staff report. The refund most significantly impacts Alameda County’s unincorporated communities of Ashland, Cherryland Fairview, Eden and Castro Valley where many residents do not have access to a park near their homes and there are concerns about the quality of publicly-used spaces. Just 44% of Castro Valley residents live within a 10-minute walking distance of a park, according to the San Francisco-based nonprofit Trust for Public Land.
Some residents said the refunds will only make things worse.
“To have these funds lost to the wind is pretty unacceptable for those of us who live here,” said Castro Valley resident Matt Turner. “My kids live in a neighborhood with no parks. Zero. We have to drive to a sports field that’s a 4.5-mile round-trip walk to the nearest public basketball hoop. We need this money.”
Supervisor Nate Miley, whose district encompasses many of the unincorporated communities affected by the refunds, said there are pros and cons to the refunds.
“It’s unfortunate that the park fees were not utilized for park purposes,” Miley said, “but the law requires they be refunded, and it’s rare that government is refunding money back to taxpayers. So in that sense, it’s a good thing. In the sense that these aren’t available for park use, that’s a bad thing… I’m not putting blame on the planning staff or the Community Development Agency for missing this, but I know HARD was very eager you get these funds.”
To reduce the chance of this happening in the future, Miley said the Board of Supervisors will introduce an ordinance in the “very near future” that would give greater oversight power to municipal advisory councils made up of residents in unincorporated communities who provide recommendations to the Board of Supervisors. The ordinance would redefine the power of MACs from purely advisory bodies to decision-making bodies with limited access to county funds, he said. If supervisors pass new powers to MACs, their members will be subject to new state ethics codes
Alameda County residents like Eden Area Municipal Advisory Council member Tyler Dragoni refuted Miley’s framing of the issue during the public comment period of the meeting, stating that a true “correction” would allocate county funding to support unincorporated county parks.
“The correction is funding our park district for the funds that the county — through its own inability– lost. That’s the correction,” Dragoni said. “This is a $1.5 million, and you’re just going to go, ‘Oopsie. Better luck next time.” You need to be responsible and take accountability for what the county lost.”
