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Road Tax Editorial

 

10-22-03

 

 

On the face of it, the proposed countywide sales tax increase for road repairs seems like a good idea, given the condition of many of our local streets. With politicians dealing with big deficits in Sacramento and Washington we have little chance of getting help from those quarters, so it's clear that if we want to make major improvements in our roadways we'll have to do it ourselves. So why would anyone be against a half-cent sales tax hike for something so important? One reason is that we've been offered a one-size-fits-all plan that's unfair to everyone living outside of the city of Lakeport, where about 8% of the county's population will garner a whopping 31% of the money generated. Though Clearlake residents will get only 24% of the tax for their 26% of the population, residents living in the unincorporated areas of the county will fare the worst and will get 45% of the money for their roughly 65% of the county's populace.

 

If the dollar-per-capita ratio isn't bad enough, then there's the disparity in amount of the work to be done in the county and two cities . Lakeport will have enough tax revenue (combined with existing funds) to repave all of their 31 miles of roadways in less than two years, while Clearlake will take eight years to resurface it's 75 miles of pavement, and even with the new funding has no plans to pave any of it's 75 miles of gravel and dirt residential trails. The county would have to wait for 15 years to put new

asphalt on it's 613 miles of paved roadways, if all it's existing funds and new tax revenues were combined and used exclusively for resurfacing, which can't be done when things like the county's 124 bridges need attention and use the same money too. So what we have is three different groups with three different sets of needs trying to get one skewed funding system to work for

all of them. It's no wonder the president of the Lakeport Regional Chamber of Commerce wrote the "pro" position in the voters guide, since measure "C" is a major windfall for the city of Lakeport and it's merchants, who would be happy to have the out-of-towners pay for most of their new pavement.

 

Also troubling is the way that measure "C" has been sold to the public, who've been led to believe that all their tax money is going to fund actual road repairs when there will also be significant administrative costs, with roughly $270,000 having been slated for consultants alone. Apparently the promoters of the measure feel that county and city road maintenance supervisors need direction when deciding which potholes to fill first, though it's hard to imagine that they haven't already given considerable thought to what they'd be able to do with a bigger budget. The Area Planning Council has already spent $65,000 on surveys to see if the measure would pass, and even tried to spend thousands more on "education efforts" to sway public opinion, not an encouraging pattern to see in an agency charged with the task of structuring the financial details of the plan. The Area Planning Council itself epitomizes bureaucratic largess, and as a rule voters and taxpayers should approach any of their proposals with good deal of skepticism and wariness.

 

What we really need is three separate plans for the three groups, with each one tailored to it's resident's own needs. Perhaps a ten-year plan for Clearlake and a five year tax for the county and city of Lakeport, or maybe special assessment districts would work well in certain instances, there are certainly more equitable and reasonably scaled options available to choose from.
A sensible measure could be on the ballot by March, where it would stand a better chance of passing than measure "C" will on the November ballot, so little if any time will be lost over the winter if we demand a better choice. Don't make a twenty year long mistake by voting for a seriously flawed measure when we can so obviously do so much better,
Vote "NO" on measure "C"! .

 

hellsbnd@pacific.net

 

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