Interesting e-mail exchange a few days ago with Brad Schulz, communications officer for Triangle Transit, about what happens next in the places that won permission from the General Assembly to hold votes on adding a sales tax for transit. Schulz was a longtime broadcast journalist in Charlotte, mostly for WBT radio, who left to work for CATS 2000-2003 and joined Triangle Transit in the Research Triangle Park in 2003.
The new law says large counties can put a half-cent sales tax to a vote of the people; smaller ones get the option for a vote on a quarter-cent sales tax. County commissioners would have to decide to put the issue on the county ballot. And I haven’t met a politician yet who thinks this year is a good one to take such a question before the voters – especially after the legislature recently popped a 1-cent sales tax increase on us to balance the state budget. But longer term, who knows?
Schulz wrote me, “It’ll be up to commissioners in Wake, Orange and Durham counties to call for a referend(um) (a) when they feel the time is right economically and when each county has a transit plan they feel adequate to answer future needs. … Triangle Transit is assisting the counties with financial modeling right now on what sales taxes could be raised with a ½ cent and what the counties could provide in ramped-up bus service (much like CATS did) as it planned for light rail.
“The sales taxes would go for bus and rail improvements in the 2015-2025-2030 time frame for construction/completion (remember if you’re going in the federal queue [for funding] it usually takes 10-12 years from plan/design/construct/opening.
“BTW… it doesn’t take all three counties moving in tandem to begin bus and rail improvements. If one or two said yes and the other/others said no, we could still move forward with planning for that county.
But, one caveat is that all of the county plans should also fold into a rational regional transit plan that would one day allow us to connect Chapel Hill with North Raleigh with 51 miles of rail. Light rail is the preferred mode, instead of the diesel units we looked at before, for energy/fossil fuel/environmental-sustainability reasons.
A 29-member citizens commission reported out last spring that the region should be ready to go it alone if there were no federal funds available. The bill as passed … would allow for 25% state funding – with that precedent set by NCDOT with the CATS Lynx South Corridor Project.
” … Chances are that the Chambers (of Commerce) would be leading the charge for the ½ cent sales tax along with the business community. BTW… the owners and tenants association of the Research Triangle Park also agreed to raise their taxes in the park to help pay for transit improvements. “