Homeowners To Fund Road Repairs?

What's the solution to Seattle's traffic problems? Well, apparently if you ask the Mayor, the solution is a tax hike... on homeowners.

Since 1998, voters have passed five levies: $117 million for education, $86 million for low-income housing, $72 million for the Seattle Center and community centers, $198 million for parks and $167 million for fire-fighting facilities.

The result is a four-fold increase over the past 10 years in what the average homeowner pays for levies. The owner of the average home in Seattle 10 years ago paid $104 for voter-approved levies. This year, the owner of the average home — assessed at $399,200 — will owe $459.

Today, Mayor Greg Nickels is expected to propose a new levy and other taxes — not for shiny new buildings, but to repair roads and bridges. His citizen advisory committee has suggested a levy of $25 million a year, and Nickels may choose to go higher.

"The need is clear, not only for the routine work of paving streets but also for the bigger projects, such as our aging bridges," Nickels said in his State of the City speech in March when he announced that he would explore a new way to fund repairs.
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The new road-repair levy would signal a departure from how Seattle has used levies in the past. Previous levies were sold to the voters like Procter & Gamble products — offering something new and improved, such as new parks, fire stations and community centers.

This levy would improve roads but not pay for any new ones. The money would fill potholes, repaint crosswalks, repave roads — in other words, pay for tasks voters have come to expect government to include in its general budget.

Granted, Seattle homeowners seem only too happy to spend far more money than necessary for overpriced real estate and granite countertops—and a few hundred dollars per year isn't going to break anyone's bank. But what is the deal with begging for more money just to do (supposedly) routine maintence? What in the heck are they doing with the general budget?

Nickels said the city needs new money for road repairs to make up for funding that used to come from the state.

I don't quite buy that argument, and as it turns out, neither does the state legislature.

State Senate Transportation Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, said she was "aghast" at Nickels' complaints about state funding. In the $8.5 billion gas-tax package the state passed in 2005, Seattle received $2.8 billion for projects like the viaduct and the 520 bridge, and an additional $2 million a year for maintenance, she said.

"The largest share certainly went to Seattle," Haugen said. "That was one of the things that people had heartburn about in the rest of the state."

So, we're getting billions of State dollars for all kinds of fancy projects, but we have to jack up the tax on (already stretched) homeowners to afford to fix potholes? Something just doesn't add up. I could be way off base here, but I can't help picturing Mayor Nickels sitting at his desk with dollar signs in his eyes, thinking about the soaring property "values" in Seattle and wondering just how much more in taxes the populous will tolerate.

This was cross-posted at both Seattle Bubble and Seattle Traffic.

(Sharon Pian Chan, Seattle Times, 05.22.2006)