Officials slam VTA plan for tax revenue

Most Measure B funds would go to BART project, not road repairs

South Bay officials are furious with Valley Transportation Authority leaders over their plan to spend most of the money raised through the Measure B sales tax over the coming decade on the $6.9 billion downtown San Jose BART extension, while slashing funds that have been used in recent years to repair local streets, improve highways and support other public transportation service.

Critics say the plan is a betrayal of Santa Clara County voters who approved the 2016 measure. The campaign to pass the half-cent sales tax increase emphasized that it would be used to fill in potholes and smooth crumbling roads throughout the county, and promised that no more than 25% of the $6.3 billion it was projected to raise would go to the BART extension.

But VTA officials say that spending cap applies over the 30-year life of the tax — not in each year. So while the BART extension is projected to eat up 24% of the total revenue raised, it will use 75% of the measure’s tax revenues during the years between the extension’s groundbreaking in 2022 and planned opening in 2030.

In an extraordinary step, members of a VTA advisory committee made up of local government leaders last week unanimously rejected the authority’s presentation of the spending plan, though the protest vote was only symbolic.

“It really is a slap in the face to voters around the county, who will now understandably wonder if they can ever count on transportation planners to act in good faith,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian said.

Until the BART extension is open, other transportation needs funded by the tax will have to divvy up the money that remains, which in most years would amount to less than $50 million, according to VTA’S estimates. Over the past four years, VTA has allocated about $148 million per year for road repairs and a slew of additional uses meant to ease the region’s crushing traffic, such as upgraded expressways and highway interchanges, projects to eliminate street-level Caltrain crossings and operational support for VTA’S bus and light rail service.

Many of those projects could face lengthy delays as the BART extension, in the words of Saratoga Mayor

Howard Miller, “sucks all of the air out of the room for 10 years.”

VTA counters that its plan is the most cost-effective way to fund the extension it is building for BART, since it helps minimize borrowing.

Few question the importance of the decades-in-themaking effort to bring the Bay Area’s backbone public transit system to the heart of San Jose. Along with a massive Google office development, new BART stops at Diridon station and along Santa Clara Street are key pieces of the plan to turn downtown into a jobs hub over the coming years.

But VTA’S plans for the 6-mile, four-station extension are facing scrutiny, and its estimated price tag has risen twice, by a combined $2.2 billion, since 2017.

The difficult choices VTA faces with its Measure B funding are in part the result of trying to build such an expensive version of the BART extension, said transit advocate Adina Levin, a co-founder of the group Friends of Caltrain.

“BART to Silicon Valley is an important project,” Levin said, “however it is not the only priority and the only need in the county.”

She is among those who have called for the authority to take a hard look at opportunities to reduce the cost of the project, such as eliminating its Diridon station to Santa Clara segment, which is projected to cost $500 million and effectively duplicates existing Caltrain service. Critics also question the downtown San Jose subway’s design — an innovative single-tube plan never before attempted in North America that VTA chose to minimize construction at street level.

Several speakers at the advisory committee meeting last week noted the 25% limit and promise to fund local road repairs were critical in winning support for Measure B among Peninsula and

South County voters, who stood to benefit less from a new rail line in San Jose, by showing they too would get something out of the tax. Two previous sales tax measures were mainly used to fund the BART extension.

“Be very careful about how you all proceed in handling the public’s trust,” former Cupertino Mayor Rod Sinks said in a public comment. “Don’t try to cheat us again.”

By the early 2030s, when the new San Jose BART stations are supposed to be open to South Bay riders, VTA’S plans show more than $260 million in Measure B funding available per year to split among other transportation needs.

“We can’t build 30 years of projects in 10 years,” VTA senior policy analyst Aaron Quigley told committee members during the meeting last week. Still, Quigley said, “You have spoken loud and clear and we have heard it.”