Let’s start with a premise that should be indisputable: Vancouver’s streets need help. Their increasingly dilapidated condition is a grind for motorists and sends a self-defeating message to the outside world: “If we aren’t willing to invest in ourselves, why would others want to invest here?” Mayor Tim Leavitt said.
So, indeed, there is a need. The question then becomes how to pay for the maintenance of existing streets and the building of new ones. To that end, the city’s Commission on Street Funding has put forth a proposal that serves as a jumping-off point for a robust discussion. Among the proposals:
• Formation of a Transportation Benefit District that would impose an annual $20 car tab surcharge, which would be raised to $40 after two years.
• An increase in the business license surcharge from $50 per employee to $60 per employee, to be raised by another $10 after two years. The surcharge is capped at 400 employees, and businesses with less than $12,000 annual gross receipts are exempt.
• A 1.5 percent utility tax hike for all customers of city water, sewer, stormwater and garbage services, amounting to about $20 a year for a typical household.
As mentioned, the need is there. City officials estimate that at their current funding level of $22.6 million a year, street conditions will decline and maintenance costs will increase; this year, an estimated $130 million in needed work is being deferred, leading commission member Tim Schauer, board chair of the Columbia River Economic Development Council, to say: “There wasn’t a pre-cooked solution; we spent quite a bit of time debating. There is a great sense of urgency. … We believe the city is at a tipping point.”
And yet, there is room for additional debate. Because the problem with all such transportation proposals and all such pressing needs is that they are presented from the perspective of the government rather than the gradual blood-letting they represent to taxpayers. Transportation, in particular, often results in death by a thousand papercuts for those who are footing the bill. Earlier this year, Doug MacDonald, a retired state transportation secretary, studied the impact that transportation funding has upon the people of Seattle. The conclusion: Seattle residents pay a staggering 28 different taxes, fees, and user charges toward transportation funding.
Mind you, Vancouver is not Seattle. But the study points out the fashion in which taxpayers get their pockets picked by the left hand of government while worrying about what the right hand is doing. And now Vancouver wants to dig a little deeper.
Because of that, the first task facing the city council as it ponders street funding should be to find savings elsewhere. Yes, the city made cuts during the Great Recession, as did all jurisdictions. And yes, street repair is a pressing need. But any effort to raise funding for street maintenance through a variety of increases to fees and taxes must be accompanied by a fine-tooth reading of the city budget. If streets are a priority, they should be dealt with first — perhaps at the expense of other city expenditures.
After that, the city can approach a broad-based method for increasing revenue. City Councilor Jack Burkman said of the proposal from the Commission on Street Funding, “Nothing is pain-free, but this is the best of the alternatives.” That might be true; but the city’s budget writers should feel the pain as well.
