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Does the city really need more money to pay for street repairs? Recently the city came up with $45 million for improvements for downtown in a supposed attempt to keep Russell Investments Group from leaving (and to keep their pipe-dream of a pie-in-the-sky financial district alive).

Now they’re considering going back to voters to ask for more money to repair streets. We already said, ‘no’ to such a proposal, but I’ll get back to that. There wasn’t a vote during this discussion so the only members mentioned in the News Tribune article as supporting the idea are Lonergan (who seems to have proposed it) and Fey.

But this is the money-quote from the TNT article:

But Councilwoman Connie Ladenburg questioned whether there was enough time to develop a proposal that would get to voters this year. Ladenburg also said that the City Council had not determined that street maintenance was the top priority, although it certainly is among the top priorities.

Wow! How did these incompetent politicians get elected? A city council that hasn’t figured out that street repairs are a top priority. Obviously, the city council has determined that street maintenance is not a top priority. Granted, there are some cities that might have higher priorities, but look at what happened Tacoma in 2006:

Tacoma - Proposition No. 1 (2006)

The city placed a measure on the ballot that failed in Tacoma in 2006 which would have raised property taxes (by $0.48 per $1,000 in property value) as an attempt to solve the problem (Tacoma Proposition No. 1 2006 November General Election) . In the ‘Statement For’ the measure, the committee members said this:

75% of Tacoma’s Streets Need Repair

Proposition 1 is a cost efficient measure providing
$48 million over a six-year period for needed repair
of our neighborhood streets.

Engineering reports show that of the 8,800 residential
blocks in Tacoma, over three-fourths suffer various
stages of disrepair. The current City budget only
has enough money to fix 24 blocks this year. At that
rate, it would take over 200 years to repair Tacoma’s
streets.

A Significant Return on Our Investment

The cost of Proposition 1 for a $200,000 home is $98
annually for six years. Every dollar raised will go
directly to residential street repair in our neighborhoods.

Proposition 1 is a responsible use of our tax dollars
and an important investment for Tacoma. Please vote
yes for safer streets and a better quality of life for all
of our Tacoma neighborhoods.

It’s interesting that when the City Council needs $48 million to fix streets they ask voters for more money, but when the want $45 million (of the $140 million in “Project Destiny”) they managed to find it in the city’s budget.

Also interesting, of the 8,800 streets in Tacoma that needed repairs (in 2006) they had budgeted (in January, 2006) for 24 of them to be repaired. How do you spell fiduciary irresponsibility? They’re allowing the city’s public assets (streets) to fall into disrepair potentially causing additional damage to the streets. Yet they still find the money to build pet projects like convention centers, light rail and a financial district (inside the Economic Empowerment Zone). In case you’re wondering, the mayor and 6 current council members (including Lonergan, Ladenburg and Fey) were on the city council in 2006.

“At that rate, it would take over 200 years to repair Tacoma’s streets.” To rephrase this statement, the city council had absolutely no intentions of budgeting money to repair streets. I also wonder which blocks were the 24 that actually saw repairs. I wonder if any of those blocks were in front of city council member’s houses. Maybe a few blocks in front of their cronies houses? If you’ve lived in Tacoma for a while, you know how things work.

Here are some more ‘facts’ about street repairs and the 2006 measure. As an interesting side note from this ‘fact’ sheet, they mentioned I-695 as one of the reasons they needed the money. For those of you who don’t read anything buy sanitized stories from the media, you should be aware that while I-695 represented a small loss of revenue to the state (single digit percentage) things like emergency services suffered double digit cutbacks, which led to a slew of emergency service levies in the state in subsequent elections. To put it another way, the legislature tried to punish voters for voting against their revenue stream, and did so in a way that would open the door for more voter approved taxes by cutting things that voters usually approve. Tacoma’s Prop. 1 (2006) appears to be yet another attempt to gouge the taxpayers who dared to vote against the legislatures wishes.

And you can save the ‘bucket’ response for someone who buys that garbage. They found money to throw at Russell. They can find money to fix streets.

In looking at the measure I noticed that the measure failed by 1,657 votes and that there were 4,657 Under Votes (neither ‘Yes’ nor ‘No’ selected on a ballot). That means that there were enough undecided voters to make this pass. So why didn’t they have an opinion? Could it be they just weren’t informed? That was a long ballot that year with a lot of offices, measures and amendments. I can see how it would slip through the cracks for some.

But what about those that voted against? I have a hard time thinking that 47% of the voters (I’m including the under votes in the total) don’t want their streets repaired. Sure, there are some liberal gas-bags that hate cars so much that they refuse to support anything that has anything to do with them. But they are an insignificant minority. So why so many votes against street repairs?

Unless, they weren’t voting against street repairs, they were actually voting against higher taxes. That makes a lot more sense. It’s been shown that voters are willing to pay for roads, but I think it’s safe to say they’re not willing to pay for them twice. They money is already in the budget. They proved that when they came up with $45 million for downtown improvements.

In my assessment Tacoma’s Prop. 1 (2006) was a piece of tripe. The city council was asking the voters to choose between their money and their streets instead of using the money they already had to do the job they were supposed to do in the first place. This discussion is exactly the same thing. I have to wonder, are these people so incompetent that they forgot about 2006, or is this one of those school levy keep-trying-’til-you-pass-it shell games?

I think the city manager answered that question:

City Manager Eric Anderson said city officials could produce a proposed project list, but he added that there are other ways to generate money for road repair including a property tax levy lid lift.

I guess it’s safe to say that as long as these money-grubbing politicians are on the job, they’ll keep trying until they can get us to part with more of our money while holding our streets hostage so they can continue with their pet projects.

I, for one, think that the city needs to spend less on pet projects, most of which are in the failed downtown, and spend more where people actually live and/or work.

As for increasing the vehicle tab fee? My $35 tabs (as per I-695) cost almost $100 this year. Do you think I’m going to vote for raising them again? Do you think voters would pass such a fee? They didn’t last time.

Update: In the comments at Exit133.com (#4):

I’ve never understood why people think that car taxes are appropriate “usage taxes” for roads. Let’s get this straight: Good infrastructure benefits everyone, regardless of whether you put your tires on the roads. Roads bring goods to your markets, attract jobs to the area, and let public services (ambulances, fire trucks, garbage) get around better. These are benefits that everyone should pay into, not just individuals with cars.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 2:45 pm and is filed under FeedTacoma.com, Tacoma Contradictions, Tacoma Economy, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.