Would you pay $20 per year to see our roads continue to be repaved? If you own a home valued at $100,000 in Tucson city limits, that’s about what you’ve been doing since 2012 when the voters first passed Proposition 409. I believe you’ve been getting a good bang for those bucks. I also believe we should reauthorize those road bonds as soon as possible.
Prop. 409 was passed by Tucson voters back in 2012. In it the city committed to investing $20 million per year into road repair for five consecutive years. Of that money, 85 percent was set aside each year for arterials and 15 percent was allocated for fixing residential streets. The ballot measure included specifically which major streets would be fixed. You knew exactly where the money was going to be spent on the arterials. And for residential roads we formed a Bond Oversight Committee that has reviewed the needs citywide and has been allocating funds each year to address residential areas.
More needs to be done. Prop. 409 expires after next year.
In addition to continuing our work on roads, the mayor and council are reviewing funding options for other key capital needs. Those include core responsibilities related to public safety, parks and transit. How we make those investments will at some point involve questions we take to you at the ballot box. Will we ask for permission to increase our sales taxing authority? Will those new dollars be earmarked for specific uses? If so, which ones? All of those questions await more public discussion. They await clarifying your priorities. What we know, though, is that road repair is far and away the major capital concern throughout the community.
When Prop. 409 was first adopted, it passed by fewer than 1,000 votes. It’s my belief that had we asked for a property tax increase for anything other than roads, the question would have failed. But we placed ourselves in the position of being strictly accountable for specific outcomes, on specific timelines and with specific amounts of your tax dollars. And we have delivered as promised.
The work is not finished, but the funding is about to run its course. The other capital needs we have identified compete with road funding in terms of prioritizing which come first. Because of state taxing laws and our city charter, we as a governing body may not simply decide to increase sales or property taxes without voter approval, regardless of the merits of what we propose to fund. That’s how it should be. We’re spending your money.
There is a legitimate public conversation to be had on how and when we fund the capital we will need in relation to improving core services throughout the community. Before we ask you for permission to change our charter and increase sales-taxing authority we will need to be clear on your priorities. Parks? Public Safety? Transit?
Road repair is the one area we know you want us to focus on. I believe we should build on the successes we have demonstrated, keep focused on doing what you’ve told us is most important to you, and take back to you as soon as possible another ballot question asking to extend Prop. 409 bond funding. While from a public-finance perspective, property taxes may not be the best way to fund roads, it’s the template we’ve modeled, and we’ve done it successfully.
We can place an extension of Prop. 409 on the ballot as early as next March. I believe we should do that and increase the proportion we dedicate to fixing residential streets. We’ll continue the parallel conversation about what other capital needs to address through charter revisions. How the voters respond to the roads question will be an important barometer for our considering other ballot taxing questions.
