Regional bus service seeks tax extension
Santa Fe County, part of Northern New Mexico group, allows regional transit system to request voters to reapprove funding
The North Central Regional Transit District wants to ask voters in four Northern New Mexico counties whether to reauthorize its gross receipts tax revenue in November, a bid to stabilize the near-term future for the regional bus service.
A ballot question this fall would allow residents of Santa Fe County and neighboring counties to weigh in on the largely free bus service, and the 2008 gross receipts tax increase that funds much of its work, four years earlier than planned.
The first step is gaining approval from the four counties — Rio Arriba, Los Alamos, Santa Fe and Taos — in amending legislation that imposed the voter-approved 2008 tax increase, which supplies more than 60 percent of the transit district’s operational revenues.
Those tax resolutions include a sunset provision: The one-eighth percent tax across the four counties will be repealed in 2024 unless a “reauthorization election” is held and approved in either 2022, a regular election year, or 2023, which would require a special election.
The transit district is now seeking amended ordinances from each of the counties that would remove the 2022 and 2023 dates, allowing voters as early as this fall to decide whether to sustain the tax — and thus the bus service, as the loss of the tax revenue would force the transit district to “implement drastic service cuts or close its doors,” according to a Santa Fe County memo.
Santa Fe County commissioners unanimously approved the change without much discussion Tuesday.
“We have to be all-in continually to provide information to the public to make the right choice to sustain what we have, which is a great thing,” Commissioner Robert Anaya said.
Los Alamos County already has approved the item, the transit district said.
Rio Arriba County is expected to take it up later this month. Taos County has not yet set a date to vote on it, according to the transit district.
The language of the ballot question is still being finalized but would likely ask voters to scuttle the 2024 sunset provision, said Jim Nagle, a spokesman for the transit district.
“Essentially, it would be, ‘Do you support removing it indefinitely?’ ” Nagle said.
In 2008, after the tax increase initially won at the polls, counties added the 2024 expiration through resolutions.
The transit district, which began operations in 2007, offers 20 fixed routes that cover a 10,000-squaremile service area, with routes that deliver riders between Santa Fe and Española, Edgewood, Eldorado, Los Alamos, Pojoaque, Tesuque and even farther afield.
The so-called transit GRT that funds the transit district would remain at one-eighth of a percent.
“There’s nothing on there that’s going to be questioning about a new tax, additional taxes, anything like that,” Nagle said.
Approval would require the support of voters across the fourcounty area.
November wouldn’t be the last chance for the transit district. Should voters shoot down the tax this fall, the agency “could propose this for another election prior to 2024,” according to the county memo.
“The way it’s written now … if it were to not pass [by 2024], then, you know, we’re done, basically,” Nagle said.
The transit district has a $12.7 million operational budget in the current fiscal year.
Tax revenue makes up $7.5 million of that and helps the district provide funding matches that leverage federal and state grants totaling more than $3.7 million.
Los Alamos and Taos counties tie for the highest gross receipts tax rate of any counties in New Mexico, both at 7.3125 percent. Santa Fe County is next with 7.125 percent.
Rio Arriba County is at 6.875 percent, though the tax rate in Española, the lone city in that county, is the second highest of any municipality in the state, behind only Taos Ski Valley.
Attorney Peter Dwyer said the certainty of continued revenue is essential for the transit district as it seeks to finance a new $6 million maintenance facility in Española; the transit district received a $3.6 million federal grant for that project last week.
If the tax resolution change is approved in each of the four counties, the district will return to the counties this summer to ask them place the question on their respective ballots.
The district has contracted a pollster to gauge support for the tax reauthorization across the region.