Regional Transportation Special Election - Question 1:

Do you approve the regional transportation plan for Pima County?

• A YES vote indicates your approval of the proposed regional transportation plan as developed by the regional transportation authority and described in the election materials.
• A NO vote indicates your disapproval of the proposed regional transportation plan.

PCLP published response:

Major roads in the Tucson metropolitan area are overly congested. Neighborhood streets are going unmaintained. The RTA and its Citizens Advisory Committee, stacked heavily with representatives of the growth industry, are taking advantage of this by asking you to pass a pork-laden $2.1 billion 20-year plan.

Among projects in the plan are:

• Construction of two runways and more gates at Tucson International, for over $250 MM
• $40 MM for the University of Arizona's CatTran system
• Over $200 MM in "Modern Light Rail --streetcars-- from the University to Downtown, El Con, and the Tohono Tadai bus station. Streetcars, which are not mass transit, cost many times more than buses, with less flexibility and no environmental, safety, or speed advantage. Voters rejected a streetcar system already; the RTA is asking until they get the right answer.

Worse still are the widening projects. Those that take place at the edges of town are a free lunch for developers and future residents that will ultimately increase traffic. In-town widenings, especially the widening of Grant Road, will be inexcusably disruptive. The displacement of scores of people from their homes and businesses, for the mere convenience of those who chose to live at the edges of town in sprawl developments is an injustice we cannot under any circumstances condone or sanction.

The 20-year plan is full of pork barrel projects and with so many road widenings taking place in areas of current or future sprawl, chances are it'll induce enough demand to put another transportation plan and tax increase on the ballot five or ten years from now. We ask you to reject it, forcing the RTA to offer us a leaner, more serious, plan, free of pork and which mitigates congestion without promoting more sprawl and heavier traffic.

Pima County Libertarian Party

Signed:

Ted Louis Glenn, chair
Bennett Kalafut, 2nd Vice Chair

A guest response...

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE - VOTE NO ON TRANSPORTATION BOONDOGGLES

Our politicians are so thick that they cannot see the obvious reason why their transportation plans continue to be shot down at the polls. It is not because voters are short-sighted. It is because these plans always bite off more than the county can chew.

The smart way to approach the transportation issue is to deal with it piecemeal. First let’s fix a few corridors here, then a few corridors there. And let’s finish the work funded by the 1997 bonds before starting new projects.

Instead, we keep getting these grandiose visions that are totally out of touch with reality.

The streetcar is a joke. The reason people don’t ride the downtown trolley is because they are not going that way it has nothing to do with the trolley being old. The streetcar is just a trolley with a fresh paint job. I can already hear the sound of $100 million being flushed.

The Grant Road widening project will result in small businesses being sacrificed. Some will be seized through eminent domain. Others will lose their customers who cannot get through the Grant / Campbell construction zone.

And the plan changes from day to day. Now we’re hearing talk of an I-10 tunnel, and now we’re not… Inevitably, the money will be squandered in meeting rooms instead of on transportation improvements, just as with Rio Nuevo.

The Regional Transportation Authority is a front for the special interest groups that fund our politicians. This plan was not molded by the citizens of Tucson who will suffer the consequences.

This new plan is a regurgitation of all the old plans combined that we rejected. Vote NO across the board.

David Euchner
Past Chairman, Pima County Libertarian Party

Regional Transportation Special Election - Question 2:

Do you favor the levy of a transaction privilege (sales) tax for regional transportation purposes in Pima County?

• A YES vote has the effect of imposing a transaction privilege (sales) tax in Pima County for twenty years to provide funding for the transportation projects contained in the regional transportation plan.
• A NO vote has the effect of rejecting the transaction privilege (sales) tax for transportation purposes in Pima County.

PCLP published response:

The RTA and the County Supervisors are asking everyone in the County to pay for the transportation plan, through a sales tax, instead of having people pay for what they use. Someone who bicycles a few miles everyday in central Tucson will pay as much as someone who commutes from Marana to the East Side.

Cycle commuters will, largely, fund the convenience of auto commuters. East Siders will pay for a streetcar to take university students downtown. Nonfliers will pay for new runways. Residents of central Tucson will be, yet again, subsidizing sprawl.

Transportation is in need of improvement, but the 2030 Plan is not what it needs and a sales tax is the wrong way to pay for it. Instead, impact fees and gas taxes, which are fair because they are user fees, should be used.

New development that puts more cars, driving longer distances, on the road and necessitates construction of new arterial roads should pay its own way through impact fees, earmarked for that purpose. Maintenance and improvement of existing roads should be funded through a higher gas tax. If more is needed, then the gas tax should be raised and indexed to inflation.

Sales taxes in Tucson are already high, and passage of the transportation excise tax will push them over 8%, making them among the highest in the US. Through subsidy of growth and mismanagement of current tax revenues, the powers that be in Pima County have in essence maxed out their credit cards, and are now asking us for new accounts. Given that transportation sales taxes have been overwhelmingly rejected several times in the recent past, you should rightly feel insulted by this request. Help break the cycle of tax increases and waste. Vote "no" on the transportation excise tax.

Pima County Libertarian Party

Signed:
Ted Louis Glenn, chair
Bennett Kalafut, 2nd vice-chair

A guest response...

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE - VOTE NO ON NEW TAXES

I am absolutely bewildered at how our government officials can continue to pitch new taxes to the voters every year as if they can just pluck it off the magical money tree.

Two years ago the county sold the voters on a pork-barrel jobs program that costs $732 million (not including billions in interest), and last year Tucson Unified School District got a quarter billion dollars for new buildings and other expenditures that will have no effect on educating our children.

Now, we're asked to fork over more than TWO BILLION DOLLARS for a transportation plan that is such a boondoggle that it will succeed no more than has Rio Nuevo.

As for the funding mechanism, I can think of nothing more fundamentally unfair to pay for transportation than a sales tax increase. It’s bad enough that a sales tax is regressive and therefore will have the greatest impact on the poor and those living on fixed incomes. For all the bluster we hear from politicians about their concern for the poor, they sure have a funny way of showing it.

Transportation improvements should be paid for by the people who use those improvements. Road widening can be financed by impact fees imposed on new construction and with gasoline taxes. A streetcar can be financed by charging a reasonable price to those who use it.

I scoff at those who say this cannot be done. These are the same people who were imaginative enough to get the state legislature to create the Pima Association of Governments. They have the resources to do the job right, and failed yet again.

This new tax revenue will be wasted. Vote NO across the board.

David Euchner
Past Chairman, Pima County Libertarian Party