For every $100 Clark County citizens spend, they pay $8.40 in sales taxes, which are distributed as follows:
• State of Washington gets $6.50.
• Cities get 85 cents.
• Clark County gets 15 cents.
• Law and justice gets 10 cents.
• Mental health (county) gets 10 cents.
• C-Tran gets 70 cents.
Cities provide police, fire, EMS, roads, sidewalks, lighting. (They also get funds from property and utility taxes.) C-Tran transports a small percentage of citizens.
Three years ago voters approved C-Tran’s .002 cent tax increase request for “essential bus service,” a 40 percent increase. That’s 20 cents on the $100 purchase, raising C-Tran taxes to 70 cents.
Yet last summer, C-Tran spent $6.7 million on Bus Rapid Transit without giving citizens a promised vote. Last fall, C-Tran chose to pay TriMet $1.7 million, plus $552,000 per year service fee, for an electronic fare-collection system. This equals 7 percent of passenger fares. There are “no identified savings.”