At a recent meeting, Milford City Council approved the Southeast Milford Transportation Improvement District (TID) Infrastructure Recoupment Agreement for Hearthstone Manor II, Phase I. City Planner Rob Pierce reviewed the agreement with council members who were not involved when the agreement was first approved.
“I want to take a couple minutes to revisit how we’ve gotten to today in terms of transportation planning around the hospital area,” Pierce said. “In the early 2000s, there were a significant number of annexations occurring in that area. The city signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOU) with the state in 2008 which committed the city to partnering with state agencies to develop a master plan for the Southeast neighborhood.”
This master plan consisted of land south of the Deep Branch Herring stream and east of the railroad easement within targeted annexation areas. The plan was developed between 2008 and 2011 with adoption as an amendment to the 2008 Comprehensive Plan as of July 2011. The master plan included designing and installing water infrastructure, a water tower, designing and planning infrastructure and establish a transfer development rights for agricultural preservation. The plan also included the establishment of a TID upon the completion of the 2018 Comprehensive Plan update.
“The TID was presented to council in 2019, and the mayor was authorized to sign an agreement with DelDOT, officially beginning our TID process,” Pierce said. “Between 2019 and 2021, the city and DelDOT worked together to develop transportation projections based on the city’s future land use plan, targeted annexation areas and zoning in order to determine what improvements would be needed to maintain a desired level of service. These findings were presented to council on April 21 and council authorized DelDOT to proceed with the concept plans which were presented and approved in 2023, allowing the mayor to execute the TID agreement.”
The TID required developers to participate with DelDOT, looking at current and projected land use patterns in an area to project traffic generated by that land use. This would allow DelDOT to determine where transportation improvements were necessary.
“Instead of an individual developer coming in to fix a particular intersection that could be impacted by a development, monies would be pulled together to build area-wide improvements,” Pierce said. “The city would collect those funds through the executed agreement and then disperse the monies to DelDOT while DelDOT would oversee the major transportation improvements near the hospital.”
Pierce explained that Red Cedar Farms was the only development that falls under the TID program while all others were approved prior to 2015. The TID presented to council at the May 27 meeting was specifically for Hearthstone Manor as that development has been approved for all phases for many years.
“The agreement would be signed by the developer and DelDOT and the city which would allow DelDOT to issue a letter of no objection to recordation of Hearthstone Manor, Phase I,” Pierce said. “For this project, the TID approval had expired, so they are going back through the review process.”
Pierce explained that the TID allowed developers to forego having to do a transportation study because the study has already been done, speeding up the process and preventing developers from redundant improvements.
“So, a developer may come in and have to do upgrades to an intersection,” Pierce said “The next developer may come in and have to rip out those improvements and upgrade the intersection again. Pulling these monies together allows them to improve the intersection fewer times and saves everyone money.”
Councilman Dan Marabello asked who determined the amounts paid into the fund by developers.
“DelDOT does,” Pierce said. “In 2023, we brought the developer contribution rates before council and that included a vehicle trip rate based on unit types for residential and a square footage charge for non-residential. That was built into our TID agreement with DelDOT. They do increase it based on inflation and we monitor that. They give us an updated rate every year and we adjust our fees in the system to collect it.”
The TID authorization was approved unanimously.
