Public needs time to digest transportation spending priorities
Supporters of bringing BART to Santa Clara County won a big victory Thursday, although they didn’t seem to realize it.
San Jose’s delegates to the Valley Transportation Authority tried to push through a new 30- year spending plan, even though VTA’s staff had only published the proposal at 5 p. m. Monday, and San Jose’s City Council had added key provisions as recently as Tuesday afternoon. Delegates from the county and other cities did them a favor by forcing a delay in the VTA vote.
Now the county supervisors, city councils and VTA’s own advisory boards will be able to discuss the plan — in public — before it goes to a final vote. That’s critical to winning public trust for a document that will guide transportation development for decades.
Why was this a victory for BART? Because a new quarter-cent sales tax will be needed to build it and many other transportation improvements communities want. If the $ 11 billion plan had been railroaded through on a split vote, the anger that rippled through the VTA board Thursday morning would have spread among voters — and the tax measure bound for next fall’s ballot would have been dead on arrival.
San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales voiced frustration that leaders from the county and other cities don’t ‘‘ pay better respect’’ to San Jose’s hard work on transportation issues. Then,
in the next breath,
he demonstrated
why they don’t. He
all but called them
slackers for being
unable to reach consensus on this plan,
as San Jose had
done.
In two days?
South County Supervisor Don Gage provided real leadership Thursday morning, arguing calmly for the simple courtesy of allowing time for people to understand and discuss the plan. More than Gonzales, Gage seems to understand the need for buy-in if a new sales tax is to win a two-thirds vote. That’s especially true this time, since voters approved a half- cent tax in 2000 that they thought would cover many of the same projects.
Even Los Gatos Councilman Joe Pirzynski, the capable VTA chair and a solid BART supporter, felt there were questions that needed answering before he could vote on the spending plan. It’s not clear, he pointed out, just how San Jose’s Tuesday additions dovetail with Monday’s VTA proposal.
Some of San Jose’s ideas seem calculated to alienate other parts of the county. For example, it would stipulate that if any additional money becomes available, it should go toward expediting BART rather than to other projects.
This might well be the wisest way to spend new money. BART is the most important — and most expensive — project for the region. But in the interest of winning consensus, does it make sense to shut off any possibility that some other community’s pet project might be funded in the future?
Gonzales is right about one thing. Time is of the essence if a tax measure is to go on next November’s ballot. His February deadline for a vote on the spending plan is reasonable.
A quick vote Thursday may have seemed reasonable to the mayor because San Jose often makes decisions based on last- minute memos the public has had little or no time to digest. It would have been doubly wrong for the regional VTA to take that approach to a 30- year plan.