According to the City’s Planner Susan Peters, in January of 2005 the Planning Commission and City Council implemented the ordinance by establishing 116 Housing Equivalent Units (HEU’s) available for 2005 along with the design criteria. The size of a HEU is determined by reviewing the amount of resources, such as sewer and water, necessary to support each individual project, for example a single family dwelling would be one HEU, but a commercial structure, depending on its scope and size, could utilize several HEUs. The Planning Commission had arrived at this number by taking the remaining sewer capacity of 435 housing equivalents, subtracting the 87 lots that could be developed within the city and dividing by the three years they felt was necessary to resolve (at least in part) the City’s sewer constraints, which was determined to be the most constrained resource.

Notices of Intent to Develop were submitted to the City in March of 2005, and the Planning Commission and City Council reviewed and allocated the HEUs to three developments in may of 2005. Those developments are Stone Creek, Shealor Trust Property, and Jackson Hills. In February of 2006 the Planning Commission implemented the ordinance again however,  Planner Peters explains the City decided that due to the uncertainty regarding the disposition of the discharge permit for the City’s wastewater treatment plant and the lack of community consensus regarding transportation improvement options the HEU’s were set at zero. In a memo to the Commission Peters gives the most current information on the resource constraints which include sewer capacity, water supply and road capacity. 

In relation to Sewer Capacity the City has remaining discharge capacity of approximately 701 dwelling units. The City is still in the process of renewing its discharge permit with the state, as the existing permit was due for renewal in June 2005. The new draft NPDES, or national Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, discharge permit will provide direction as to how much, if any, wastewater effluent may still be discharged into the Jackson Creek as the City has done for many years now.  With some modification to the treatment plant, or implementation of other options, the discharge permit could be increased to accommodate approximately 1050 more dwelling units.  In terms of water supply, Peters explains that the AWA, who is the wholesale provider of treated water to the City, is currently constructing the Amador Transmission Pipeline. The new pipeline will eliminate current water supply constraints. All development projects will continue to be required to obtain a “will serve” letter from the AWA.  

Traffic has also been a major concern, not only in Jackson, but throughout the entire county. According to Peters the circulation element of the General Plan has a policy threshold requiring that a Level of service C be maintained on roadway segments and intersections except the Hwy. 88 segment from the intersection with 49/88 to Court Street, which is limited to Level of service D. The City exceeded this threshold on two segments of Hwy. 49. The traffic workshops held over the spring of 2006 by Jackson, ACTC, Amador County and the Jackson Rancheria revealed the public preferred a series of smaller operational and safety improvements rather than a bypass. The City is still in the process of pursuing those improvements with the Amador County Transportation Commission. Tuesday night the City Council will review all of this information during the workshop and decide if the issues surrounding traffic, sewer and water supply have been resolved enough to allocate any Housing Equivalent Units for developer this year.