San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Counties add new terms to proposed Caltrain tax
Officials in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties have set new conditions to approve a November sales tax measure for Caltrain, the Peninsula rail line that’s facing financial ruin.
Under the proposed agreement obtained by The Chronicle, all funds generated by the oneeighthcent sales tax would go back to the county in which they are collected. The money would be deposited in an account controlled by the county’s transit agency, which would then have the authority to give all of it — or a fraction of it — to Caltrain.
Top staff at the rail agency say they desperately need the tax to pass. When COVID19 hit, Caltrain lost 95% of its riders, a severe blow for a system that relies on fares to cover 70% of its operating costs. Agency staff say that without the tax — which they project would generate $100 million a year — they will either have to shut down service or cut it so severely that hardly anyone would use it.
But the tax has to go through a long and complicated approval process even to get on the ballot. It needs to pass through four transit boards as well as the boards of supervisors in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Last week, two
San Francisco supervisors tried to scuttle the tax by declining to introduce it at a board meeting in hope it would not get a hearing or a vote.
The supervisors, Aaron Peskin and Shamann Walton, have long been frustrated with the governance structure of Caltrain because it is run entirely by the San Mateo County Transit District, known as SamTrans, which manages and operates the system for a threecounty Joint Powers Board. Walton is also a Caltrain board director.
To untangle that setup, the supervisors stipulated in their proposal that if the three counties can’t strike a deal on governance by an unspecified date, then they would each be allowed to spend the tax money on their own transit projects along the corridor, instead of giving it to Caltrain.
“This is a road map to getting everyone where they need to be,” Peskin said Friday night.
Some representatives of Caltrain appeared blindsided by the proposal, while others attacked it. Board Director Charles
Stone, who is also a Belmont councilman, called the agreement “another tactic to try to shake down SamTrans and San Mateo County.” Agency spokesman Dan Lieberman said he “was not aware that a proposal to move money around was being considered.”
The county transit agencies kick in money each year to fund Caltrain — Muni pays $15.6 million annually for the Peninsula railroad’s capital and operating costs — but officials say if the sales tax passes, that obligation would end. Though nobody would say publicly who wrote the proposed new agreement, Walton and Peskin have been part of the negotiations, along with at least one Santa Clara County supervisor.
The fight spilled onto Twitter last week, morphing into an ideological battle. Transit activists accused the San Francisco supervisors of holding a rail system hostage to make a point about local control. Others criticized the sales tax for being regressive — it disproportionately hits lowincome taxpayers — and said Caltrain should instead tax the wealthy or raise fares for passengers, many of whom commute to wellpaying tech jobs.
Advocates warned that without Caltrain, traffic will choke Highway 101 and people who don’t own cars will be consigned to long bus rides. Some point out the tax, if passed by voters, would pay for service outside rush hour, possibly bringing in a more diverse pool of riders.
Adina Levin, a longtime Caltrain rider and transit activist, feared that if each county controlled its own share of the tax money, it would plunge the system into periodic crisis. If one county had grievances and withheld funds, then Caltrain would have to compensate by raising fares, making service cuts or delaying badly needed maintenance.
“The agencies are competing with each other with the risk that harm would come to the customers,” she said.
Even if the tax measure wins approval from all seven government bodies, it will still need to pass by a twothirds voter majority across three counties.
Caltrain has so far won the messaging war on Twitter, drawing sympathy with threats that it would go dark around Christmas, a notion that Peskin said is “manufactured.”
As the drama heats up, the sales tax measure is still plodding through its approval process. It’s due for a vote in Santa Clara County on Tuesday and may be introduced later that day in San Francisco.