As an increasing number of Pima County streets continue to fall into disrepair, a nearly $1 billion plan is being pitched in the form of a new property tax.
Pima County voters may soon be asked to consider an ambitious plan for $860 million in road repairs funded by property taxes over a decade or a scaled-down plan with a price tag of $430 million over five years.
The plans, authored by Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, would be considered only if a half-cent sales tax designed to generate an estimated $887 million in revenue for street repairs falls flat with the Board of Supervisors at a meeting scheduled for Tuesday.
A third option could have the supervisors ask voters to back the proposal in phases, approving the first $430 million in funding at the polls in November and then again asking voters to renew the proposal a few years from now.
Huckelberry signaled in a 39-page memo sent to the board and key county staff that the half-cent proposal was “likely” to fail, noting that state law requires unanimous support to approve increases in the sales tax and Supervisors Ally Miller and Steve Christy have already voiced their intentions to vote it down.
“This is the last and only option the Board of Supervisors has regarding achieving road repair in a reasonable time frame,” Huckelberry wrote in the memo.
A critical aspect of Huckelberry’s proposal is that property taxes wouldn’t change; instead, it would be extended at the current rate for the next 15 years.
If voters were to reject a street-repair bond proposal, secondary property taxes would begin to decrease as existing bond debt is paid off over the next decade.
Huckelberry acknowledged the similarities with a failed attempt in 2015 to pass $815 million in bonds, including roughly $160 million set aside for road repairs.
He noted that in the last three years, the number of streets rated as failing has continued to grow.
“Today the miles of poor and failed road has increased to 70 percent, and it’s now been 27 years since the state increased the gas tax,” Huckelberry wrote.
County Supervisor Sharon Bronson indicated she would support the proposed bond measure, but only if half-cent sales tax increase fails to pass on Tuesday.
She acknowledged the proposal was the last possible rabbit that Huckelberry could pull out of his hat — calling the measure “a Hail Mary.”
The county has run out of options, she said, saying Southern Arizona needs the state and the federal government to recognize that funds for fixing roads are in short supply and that local municipalities have limited power to fix them by themselves.
Supervisor Christy hinted he would prefer to support the five-year plan, saying there might be new options to pay for road repairs in the near future.
“We might be able to find a different source in five years,” he said.
But it should be noted that $860 million won’t fix every road in Southern Arizona.
It would take more than a billion dollars to fix roads in Pima County, and the current estimate to fix all the streets inside the Tucson city limits is $853 million.
Oro Valley Town Manager Mary Jacobs said that if the road bond is eventually backed by voters, the millions of dollars that would go into the town’s coffers would be used to fix aging roads.
She argues that unlike other cities and towns in Pima County, Oro Valley doesn’t have millions of dollars in unfunded street repairs.
“The town of Oro Valley’s Pavement Preservation Program has enabled us to invest in roadway maintenance every year and avoid having a backlog of repairs,” Jacobs said.
