Snohomish County voters will have the opportunity to show they are “better” than Seattle this election, by raising their sales tax even higher than the Emerald City, should they choose. Proposition 1, a countywide measure, would raise the sales tax rate by 0.3 percentage points for a staggering total of 9.8 percent in much of south Snohomish County. The new rate would top the state, exceeding that of Seattle’s 9.6%.
Elected officials were forced to balance their budgets, and reduce services provided by Snohomish County’s Community Transit over the last 10 years. Though the end of the recession has allowed the agency to restore cut services, elected officials have set their sites higher. According to the Seattle Times, they hope to “transform lifestyle and housing patterns, by making public transit options abundant.”
Proposition 1 promises to add two more Swift bus-rapid transit lines every 12 minutes. Additionally, new routes would be added to the Highway 9 corridor. The measure would result in 1.2% sales tax rate just for Community Transit.
Snohomish County voters will have to decide whether or not having the highest sales tax in the state is worth their elected officials’ vision of transforming the county’s “lifestyle and housing patterns.”
We get you oppose transit.
But where were you guys when the state legislature passed a big, fat highway SUBSIDY SANS VOTER APPROVAL?
Community Transit is relatively underfunded considering demand – 40% of Snohomish County uses transit to get to/from Seattle, 1% of the vehicles take 25% of the commuters on I-5 and 24% farebox recovery – way higher than most other transit agencies in the state.
Facts to think about.
P.S. I have a screenshot of this comment. Just in case.
“Just in case” of what?
Somebody decides to hit the delete button. ShiftWA doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Paranoid much? As far as I know, nobody has ever “hit the delete button” on any of my comments. If ShiftWA inspires so little confidence, why on earth do you continue to comment here?
Somebody has to
Your commentary might have some merit if it had some basis in fact, but all you manage to do is parrot the same, tired talking points straight out of the liberal, secular-progressive playbook.
The progressives don’t want any tax increase ever getting voter approval.
I, on the other hand………….
That is either abysmal ignorance on your part, Joe, or an outright lie. Progressivism was how communism, where the state controls every aspect of commerce, was sold to armchair liberals in the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds. Progressivism is absolutely committed to taxing people as much as they humanly can, how else will their worthless programs be funded? You must only watch MSNBC and never have taken Economics in High School. It used to be a requirement to graduate. Another child left behind.
By the way I used public transit for years in Spokane, the greater Seattle metroplex could learn a lot from them, and more from Portland. The Seattle area has not one but two bus systems in which neither honours the other’s transfers. Must be some kind of “diversity” garbage. Having lived in Snohomish county I suspect that the politicians in the heroin capital of Washington are as lame as the ones in Seattle. Perhaps the people running the transit system on the highest levels should get progressive pay cuts until they fix their trash laden system, or jailed for corruption/skimming funds. Fix the problem, don’t throw good money after bad jsut so you can feel good about it. By the way do you own property, or a business? Do you pay anything besides sales tax? Why don’t you own a vehicle? Are you employed, or do you live in your mother’s basement? YOU are a progressive, how did you ever get the idea that you aren’t? Progressives want everyone else to fund their ideas, sounds like you.
All I read is: BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.
No, we don’t need you. if ShiftWA inspires so little confidence, feel free to stop commenting or even visiting the site. Nobody will miss you. If you continue to comment on a site that ” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence”, you’re a loser and you need to get out of mom’s basement.
I find your statement that 40% of Snohomish County uses transit to get to Seattle has totally lacking credibility.
See page two of http://www.commtrans.org/News/Documents/The%20Route%20Ahead%202015_Optimized.pdf
I see reading comprehension is NOT one of your strengths. It states, “40% of Snohomish County commuters going to Seattle use public transit.” That is a significantly lower figure than 40% of Snohomish County. Commuters infers people who travel to and from Seattle on a regular basis for work, a subset of people who reside in Snohomish County and 40% of those is a smaller subset and virtually all of those are going to the downtown core of that city because transit connections to outlying districts and to other suburban locations is long and difficult, if not impossible.
I also don’t understand what you mean by “subsidy” to fund highways when that is one of the essentially governmental roles of the state, counties and cities. Revenue derived from taxes goes to a lot of things like that that are essentially governmental in nature… police and fire protection, and other things that provide safety to the public at large. Things like providing parks and transportation are optional and should not have general tax rates raised to provide them. A better method of paying for commuters to get to work is at the fare box; you know… user pays.
Well let’s see you just don’t like transit, we get it. But a substantial minority do and we pay fares, we don’t congest your highways and we don’t have unsafe drivers on the highways. You can handle a little tax increase for a way better transit system.
Grow up, Joey. You don’t pay ENOUGH at the fare box and expect those who do not or can not use transit, to subsidize you. I do NOT dislike transit, it does have a place in providing transportation for many people, but the way it’s administered and operated is extremely wasteful and depends far too much on general taxes and fees that penalize non-transit users that have no need or otherwise do not use public transit on a day to day basis.
Now, instead of the off-hand ad hominem attack that I simply don’t like transit, respond to my point in furtherance of your position on transit.
And in response to your last sentence… no, I can’t handle a little tax increase (that would make the sales tax rate higher than King County), I’m retired on fixed income and no COLA for 2016, which means for increased expenditures I’ll have to draw more from my retirement savings.
Well a lot of people who are on fixed incomes DO use transit and need MORE transit.
So even in retirement I must subsidize others to use public transit which provides no benefit to me, even to the point of increasing my financial burdens for others. I’d acknowledge that there are SOME on fixed income who may use transit, but a lot… I don’t know about that. Do you have facts and figures you can cite to support your premise that “a lot of people who are on fixed incomes DO use transit and need MORE transit”?
I have to subsidize roads and utilities in the middle of nowhere, First Responders I rarely need, Medicare which I don’t use, and more. I don’t think this debate is going to get you to vote YES.
Your pro arguments are becoming weaker every time you post. Taxes to pay for roads and highway, as I’ve already explained, are not a subsidy. Roads and highways are inherently governmental. You won’t know you need a first responders until… well, you need them, your home catches fire, someone breaks into your home, have an accident, etc. Finally, of course you don’t use Medicare, unless you’re over 65. I paid into Social Security and Medicare, but I’ll never receive even one nickel in benefit from SS and my health insurance coverage provides better coverage than Medicare, so I chose to opt out so I don’t incur additional cost to pay Medicare premiums that won’t get me better healthcare.
Well let’s just (say) you want everybody to pay for your transportation choices, we get it.
The highways and roads you drive on are quite subsidized. Quite so.
Roads and highways are built and maintained by government, just as the airways and the waterways, in order to enable commerce, those are inherently governmental functions, not a subsidy. By definition, a subsidy is a grant of money to private enterprise.
Then arguably mass transit is “in order to enable commerce, those are inherently governmental functions, not a subsidy”. Commuters need the roads and airways. Your plane ticket doesn’t cover all the cost of the FAA to regulate the skies…. but that’s another subject.
The price of a ticket includes a federal tax that goes into the Airways Trust Fund that does pay for the cost of building and maintaining the National Airway System. Other taxes and fees paid by airway users, such as aviation fuel taxes, landing fees, etc. also support aviation at various levels. Very little general, Federal revenue pays for that. The exception to that is that FAA administrative offices, like the FAA Headquarters In DC and the various regional offices are owned or leased by the General Services Administration for which the FAA reimburses, as in leases or subleases, from the GSA.
BTW, public transit hardly qualifies and being commerce in the strict sense of what commerce is since it is, by definition, owned by the public and doesn’t make any profits.
So what you’re telling me is the highways and roads are quite subsidized AND the buses that use those same highways and roads are also quite (maybe more quite) subsidized. We get it. Although you’re already double subsidized, you parasitic transit riders want more. Quite so.
Good guys won!