Recently Clark County Commissioner Marc Boldt came on The Victoria Taft Show to comment on his letter to the State of Washington calling for transportation officials to establish a tolling advisory board (see the letter nearby). During our conversation (find it here) I asked if he agreed that the upcoming sales tax increase on the November ballot serves as a proxy for a decision on light rail itself. He did. Since it’s the only time voters will be allowed to speak out on the issue and some of the funding would go to support light rail, it follows naturally that this vote does serve as a proxy.
This November, there will be an ask of the voters within the CTRAN service area to increase sales tax of 1 penny on a 10 dollar retail purchase. If approved, the revenues generated will be utilized to pay for:a) The CRC LRT [LIGHT RAIL] annual operations and maintenance cost, and
b) The proposed bus rapid transit improvement (both local matching capital — about 30% of the capital cost, and the annual operations and maintenance).The CTRAN service area — or those that will vote on this ballot measure — include all households within the limits of the City of Vancouver and within the Vancouver Urban Growth Boundary (this comprises some 65% of the CTRAN service hours for fixed bus routes), and all households within the city limits of every other city in Clark County.
If not approved by the voters, then, obviously, there will not be a sales tax increase to cover the costs of both projects. However, if the voters do not approve of sales tax as a funding mechanism for either project (as I suspect they will), the projects do not go away.This ballot measure is in no means intended to be a referendum on either project, or the CRC for that matter. You’ll hear politicians and candidates opine that this is the case, and no doubt some in our community will be persuaded as such and vote accordingly (yes or no), but the fact is that this measure is not planned/not intended/not perceived by honest folks to be a referendum. Those that suggest otherwise are merely misguiding our public and such statements are entirely disingenuous and, my opinion….insulting to the intelligence of our citizens.
I could go on with arguments about the non-sense of having a referendum vote on a project of national significance….but that’s another conversation for another day.
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