Vehicle registration fee passes

Commissioners vote 2-1 to add $5 for county residents

After more than an hour of debate, the Montgomery County commissioners passed a $5 fee added on to vehicle registrations for county residents Thursday.

The measure passed 2-1, with Republican Commissioner Joe Gale opposing the ordinance.

“It’s practically comical to say that we have a revenue problem with infrastructure,” Gale said. “We just saw a graph that said 2001 to present day; it’s at the highest level in history of revenue to go towards infrastructure. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a cost problem.”

Commissioners Josh Sha- piro and Val Arkoosh, both Democrats, expressed support for the measure before the vote, along with a line of others who spoke in favor.

State Reps. Mike Vereb, R150th Dist., and Tim Briggs, D-149th Dist., spoke first, followed by the heads of the Montgomery County Planning and Transportation commissions and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, as well as other officials.

Vereb said that, for years, officials played a “shell game” with funding, delaying repairs on structurally deficient bridges to avoid tax increases.

“You can either pay now, or you can pay when there’s a family in the river,” Vereb said.

The discussion came after Gale made a failed motion to table the ordinance untilmore public input could be received. Neither Shapiro nor Arkoosh seconded the motion, and the vote on the ordinance proceeded.

“The issue was right and we were ready to vote on it. We had proper public notice,” Shapiro said. “It was also critically important to vote today so we would have a full year’s worth of collection in 2017 sowe could maximize our investment in infrastructure.”

The fee, an option made available to the county as part of transportation funding bill Act 89, would give the county funds to be used exclusively on transportation projects such as bridge repair and road improvement. The fee will be enacted in 90 days.

County staff estimated that the fee would bring in $3.5 million in funds for infrastructure projects, with an emphasis on repairing bridges.

“We are in a real serious situation here in Montgomery County with our bridges. Due to many, many years of maintenance neglects and lack of forward thinking, this administration inherited 62 structurally deficient bridges,” Arkoosh said. “We simply can’t wait any longer for state and federal funds… to get these bridges fixed.”

The issue had become contentious when Gale publicly declared his stance against the increase, using his website and interviews with the press to discuss that opposition. While he agreed with the statement that “infrastructure is a core function of government,” a phrase used by each of the commissioners during the discussion, he said the county should be able to complete that function without further reaching into the pockets of residents.

“It’s an endless cycle of waste, fraud and abuse. It just continues and continues. Something like this deserves more public input. It affects every vehicle driver in the whole, entire county,” he said. “We should do things from the state level, down to the county level to the municipal level tomake solutions to

bring down the costs.”

However, Gale’s voice stood alone as the opposition to the registration fee, which one speaker pointed out would cost 42 cents a month per vehicle.

Gale’s opposition does not extend to the infrastructure projects that will be funded by the ordinance, he said. He pointed out that others have criticized his stance, calling him a hypocrite for attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies for infrastructure proj--

ects while voting against future funding for similar construction.

“I think one of the main, core functions of government is to maintain infrastructure. I was criticized for attending ribbon-cuttings of bridges where we spent millions of dollars and years to accomplish the project. Of course I would stand there and congratulate the project, because it deserves somuch time and effort and money put into it.”

“You can either pay now, or you can pay when there’s a family in the river.” State Rep. Mike Vereb, R-150th Dist.