Nearly half of Tucson-area residents are dissatisfied with the condition of local roads and think government should do more to keep them from crumbling even further, a new Arizona Daily Star community poll that’s part of a partnership between the Star and Tucson’s Strongpoint Opinion Research shows.
And a majority of community members polled, indicate they might be willing to open up their wallets in order to make their daily commute a little smoother. Of the almost 1,700 people who participated in the poll, nearly 7 in 10 said they would, or might be willing to, pay more taxes for road maintenance.
A majority — more than 700 of the 1,695 people surveyed — who indicated they would or might be willing to pay more taxes for better maintained roads were Tucson residents.
There is a history showing Tucsonans are willing to put up money to back that opinion.
In the last six years, city residents twice supported specific proposals to put an additional $100 million into city streets. They first did so in 2012, backing a property tax increase to pay for municipal bonds, and did so again last year by supporting a temporary half-cent sales tax hike to pay for street repairs along with equipment for first responders.
Voters are willing to pay for road projects, if those projects are limited in scope and offer third-party oversight to protect taxpayers, says Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild.
“Voters will vote for something when they know what they are getting and if it has been well-vetted in the community,” Rothschild said.
In 2015, Pima County voters rejected a series of bond initiatives totaling $815 million.
Proposition 425, a $200 million bond project that included $160 million for road repairs, did better than most of the other county bond initiatives on the ballot. In the end, only 46 percent of voters backed the measure.
County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said that additional funding for roads has been a popular request from residents for years. Critics of Prop. 425 often said that county’s bond debt was already too high.
Those complaints are taken out of context, Huckelberry said, comparing Pima County to other counties that did not have to take on debt for a massive and expensive sewer system.
Bond questions tied to property-tax increases are a hard sell, said Huckelberry. He noted that the Pima County Board of Supervisors will be asked this summer to consider a sales-tax increase that would be dedicated to road repairs.
In the poll, 68 percent said they are somewhat or extremely dissatisfied with road maintenance near where they live and 52 percent said are dissatisfied with traffic flow around where they live.
Among poll respondents who said they were dissatisfied with road maintenance, 83 percent said not enough resources are going into keeping up roads, including the repair of potholes and pavement cracks, removing debris and obstructions and replacing or repairing street signs.
And 88 percent of survey respondents also said there was a significant need for additional resources for road improvements, including widening existing roads and construction of new roads, bridges, bike paths, streetscapes and walkways.
Almost a third of respondents said the roads they drive on most are maintained and in good condition. Two-thirds of those responses came from people living within the city of Tucson.
How to pay for it
The best way to fund additional road repairs should be paid at the pump, according to 56 percent of the respondents who said they’d support an increase in the gas tax.
The current gas tax in Arizona is 18 cents a gallon, a figure that has not changed since 1991.
Absent a change in state law or a successful referendum, the gas tax cannot be changed.
There are several bills that have been introduced by state lawmakers this year that would increase the gas tax or allow individual counties to increase it — a goal sought by Pima County for the last few years — but those bills are currently stalled in various committees.
One alternate to raise money could come from a dedicated income tax, but only 26 percent of those polled said they’d support such a tax hike to fix area roads.
Transportation Authority extension
Participants in the survey were mostly unsure if they would back an extension of the 20-year, $2.1 billion Regional Transportation Authority plan approved by Pima County voters in 2006.
The plan, funded by a countywide half-cent sales tax, includes various transportation projects designed to improving safety, cross-town mobility and reducing congestion.
The RTA has spent $1 billion on about 785 distinct projects throughout Pima County. When asked how likely they would be to support extending the RTA, 37 percent of those polled said they would.
But 40 percent couldn’t say now, or didn’t know. Some 23 percent of those polled said they were unlikely to extend the regional transportation plan.
One issue related to the RTA is that nearly half of the respondents didn’t know enough it about to rate its accomplishments.
RTA Executive Director Farhad Moghimi isn’t phased that the transportation authority might fly under the radar for the average person.
People are more likely familiar with the specific transportation projects that are part of the commute, and much more likely to associate those projects with the town or city that they live in, Moghimi said. He added that getting credit for projects isn’t his agency’s priority.
The RTA is focused on working behind the scenes on the various projects planned to be built before 2026, Moghimi said.
