Hold your horses, Broward, on 30-year transportation tax
If only Broward County commissioners would reconsider their plan to raise $15.6 billion for transportation projects by asking voters to increase the sales tax by a penny for 30 years.
If only they would consider a 10-year tax, or something far less than 30 years, that focuses on much-needed upgrades, that proves their numbers are trustworthy and that doesn’t commit Broward to old-school technology in the face of a rapidly changing transportation landscape.
If only they would recognize that while people want something done about traffic congestion, they’re still reeling from the recent collapse of the county’s first proposed leg of light rail — the Wave streetcar. The 2.8-mile route didn’t come close to its projected pricetag, would have done nothing to relieve bottlenecks and wound up costing our community tens of millions of dollars for nothing.
Business leaders and others, including this editorial board, have encouraged commissioners to instead seek a 10-year penny increase in the county’s six-cent sales tax.
Expand roads. Improve intersections. Lay more fiberoptic cable so that red lights automatically adapt to traffic demands, cellphones get needed mapping information and express buses can command more green lights. Fix school safety zones. Add sidewalks, bike lanes and street lights. Add bus routes and better bus shelters. Enhance transit services for the disabled. Prove you can deliver. That’s how Palm Beach County commissioners got voters to approve a second 10-year sales-tax increase two years ago. Voters saw the progress made in the first go-round and trusted commissioners to again do what they said they’d do — build new schools, rebuild bridges and deliver on-budget.
Palm Beach also was able to float construction bonds against the revenue stream, something Broward continues to raise as an objection.
There’s much to like in the county’s proposal to improve transportation, which commissioners will likely decide Tuesday to place on the November ballot.
Without question, Broward needs more money to expand roads, improve bus services and better move people across the region, including within its 31 cities.
But except for Commissioner Steve Geller, we’ve heard little questioning of what appears to be the plan’s fatal flaw: a pie-in-the-sky $4 billion, 27-mile light-rail system powered by overhead wires. percent of people would support a halfpenny sales-tax increase for transportation and another half penny for infrastructure improvements. But that number dropped significantly on Election Day. While 51 percent of voters approved the transportation tax, only 38 percent favored the infrastructure tax. Because both didn’t pass, both died.
To hear the talk today, you’d think voters overwhelmingly approved that transportation tax two years ago. It’s part of what’s driving the rush to the ballot — with a plan that seems to change by the day.
Hold on, folks. Fifty-one percent is hardly a slam dunk. And before asking voters — for a third time — to raise taxes for transportation, shouldn’t the county try to improve the odds?
Yet there was Commissioner Michael Udine saying: “I think if we’re going to do it, we put it on and we just don’t overthink this to death.”
And Commissioner Mark Bogen saying: “I think this county needs rail more than anything.”
Rail is needed, but not as proposed in this plan. chokehold on its river lifeline.
The railroad is tough to negotiate with, though. It’s working with Miami-Dade County on the southern leg of the Coastal Link, but won’t yet set its access fee. Broward, though, holds more negotiating cards: Brightline wants public land for a stop at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
“If the county told me it would use some of that one-cent for a tunnel, I’d be all for it because that is thinking in the future,” Trantalis told us. “We’ve got to understand that that bridge over the New River is what is holding back the prospects for real transportation change in our county.”
“The penny sales tax plan,” he added, “nobody knows what’s going on. We need to take a step back because most people are very doubtful that government has the right answer. They felt like they were sold a bill of goods with the Wave and they’re very gun-shy when it comes to wanting to take a major step forward with a multibillion-dollar tax proposal.”
Like everyone, Commissioner Chip LaMarca, the county commission’s only Republican, wants something done about transportation, but also has his doubts about the plan.
“A project that we couldn’t get off the ground in downtown, I don’t think will be any easier to accomplish in these other thoroughfares,” he said. “I’m not sure the plan is there yet. I’m not sure they have the time to get it there, then sell it, the way the school bond was passed, where everybody understood there was something in it for their children’s schools.” and should resist reserving lanes for light rail or express buses.
The idea needs study, but remember that a flyover is planned at Sunrise Boulevard and Federal Highway. And at long last, planners expect to connect the Sawgrass Expressway and Interstate 95 via a depressed roadway — a tunnel without a top — along SW 10th Street.
“It goes back to planning,” Stuart says. “You need to plan first, then come up with something that carries you into the future. Maybe that’s the 10-year argument. Do the stuff you need to do now, then come back with a bolder vision.”