WATSONVILLE >> Nearly three years after adopting its Vehicle Miles Traveled mitigation program, the Watsonville City Council is considering expanding it into a regional program. That decision will come at a later meeting, but for now, the council will receive a report on the program and its future at Tuesday’s meeting.

According to a staff report by Public Works Director Courtney Lindberg, Interim Community Development Director Justin Meek and Assistant Public Works Director Murray Fontes, the Vehicle Miles Traveled program has its roots in 2013’s Senate Bill 743, authored by then-Sen. Darrell Steinberg and signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. The program, now required by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, measures the total amount of miles traveled by vehicles and uses that information ins studies to reduce environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions as well as improving roadways.

Once the legislation went into effect in 2020, Santa Cruz County and other lead agencies adopted new California Environmental Quality Act thresholds using state-recommended metrics for transportation impacts under CEQA. Watsonville adopted its Vehicle Miles Traveled program in 2022 and approved an in-lieu fee for associated development projects in 2023. To date, Watsonville has collected $114,315 for the program.

“Burdened with new mitigation requirements, local developers have been asking for a mechanism that will make mitigation of transportation impacts more cost predictive and manageable,” Lindberg, Meek and Fontes wrote. “Without a clearly vetted and documented VMT mitigation program, it is extremely difficult, time consuming, and expensive to establish nexus and fair share contributions to off-site VMT mitigations.”

Back in 2022, Santa Cruz County staff joined the city of Watsonville and the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to apply for a Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant from Caltrans which would be used to develop a framework for a regional Vehicle Miles Traveled mitigation program that would ensure compliance to the California Environmental Quality Act transportation impact metrics and offer simplified alternatives for project mitigation. The applicants were awarded a grant to the tune of $396,614 with a required 11% match, amounting to $51,386. The match will be accomplished in staff time.

The regional program aims to provide Santa Cruz County and its cities with a regionally coordinated fee collection program that would be used to fund projects that would decrease vehicle miles traveled, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, improve safety, combat climate change and improve the quality of infrastructure within disadvantaged communities, the report’s authors wrote.

“A countywide program holds the potential to implement a more effective program than any single agency could achieve on its own in terms of these outcomes,” Lindberg, Meek and Fontes wrote.

County staff are collecting feedback on the proposal for a final report, slated to be published in March. While the council is not being asked to confirm participation in the program — something the report’s authors wrote may occur at a later meeting —, it is being asked to consider whether or not to direct staff to take part in the development of implementing the program.

In other business, the council will receive a presentation on the city’s Pavement Management Plan and an update on Watsonville’s portion of the Coastal Rail Trail.

The council will meet publicly at approximately 6:30 p.m. Tuesday on the top floor of the Watsonville City Council Chambers, 275 Main St. The public meeting will be preceded by a closed session to discuss legal matters starting at 4:30 p.m.