Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is seeking to raise taxes to pay for a $500 million backlog in basic road maintenance. The details of the tax and where the money will go are still up in the air, but the safest prediction is that we'll pay through the nose and a lot of the money will be wasted. The biggest fear is that necessary neighborhood road maintenance will be subordinate to paying unlimted billions for Nickel's Tunnel Big Dig Boondoggle. But there are sane voices in the debate:
"I agree with the mayor about the need for some funds to do basic maintenance," said Andy MacDonald, the volunteer president of the city Neighborhood Council's transportation committee. ... But MacDonald opposes linking that funding to the tunnel proposal.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 15, 2006 09:55 AM | Email This"(Nickels) seems to want to bundle the basic maintenance with big ticket projects like getting the viaduct put into a tunnel," he said. "If we're going to have a levy we should just focus on the maintenance that we need and leave the funding of the viaduct to the state of Washington."
As long as governments work to shift all road infrastructure costs to the taxpayers, and allow the growth industries to be fully subsidized for those costs, we should be prepared for more and more new taxes to fund roads. If we don't want to fund it, we can work to reform transportation agencies into doing honest analysis, decisiion making bodies into defending the taxpayers from excessive subsidies to the growth industry, or we can await complete gridlock.
Nickels himself failed the test while on the King County Council, in doing absolutely nothing while King County shifted hundreds of millions in unfunded road projects from developers to the taxpayers.
Posted by: MJC on March 15, 2006 10:18 AMYou, as a long term homeowner are getting screwed, too. But, your home value (and thusly your taxes) are due to inflated home prices partially caused by developer impact fees. No matter what, there is a risk involved for the developer. The cost of that risk will always get passed on to the home buyer. This results in inflated home prices. They "always" get passed on with "profit" for the risk.
What you are suggesting is to make the inflation even greater by making all the costs upfront.
And your traffic problems aren't caused by the homeowner. If your business would only locate in the suburbs there would be no need for the commute and clogging of the artieries (arterials).
Maybe, the businesses need to pay more for transportation.
Posted by: swatter on March 15, 2006 10:42 AM
Posted by pseudotsuga at March 15, 2006 10:33 AM
Pseudotsuga, I have a feeling it won't just be the people of Seattle or King County that will actually be the only ones Nickled and dimed to death. Somehow, the rest of us will be paying for Seattle's problems. That's the typical modus operendi.
Posted by: Libertarian on March 15, 2006 11:04 AMImpact fees don't drive home prices in this market, supply and demand does. And as long as there are more buyers than sellers, home prices will continue to rise. Impact fees come out of developer profits, and those profits are way beyond reasonable in this market. Remember also that profit is what comes AFTER everyone has skimmed their piece off the price of a home.
If impact fees ever created the dissincentive to build, how bad would that be? The evidence proves that we can no longer keep up with growth.
King County has tens of billions in unfunded road projects, record levels of capital bonding, higher taxes than ever, and unrestrained growth occuring with no "real" investment in infrastructure. The only money we're able to come up with is to build monuments to greedy sports franchises and transportation boondoggles that will redistribute billions from the taxpayers to construction profiteers, while improving nothing! Isn't anyone concerned about what things will look like in 10 or 20 years? Consider that changes in the last 20? Is King County a better place to live today than in 1986?
We are now faced with paying the piper because the impact costs of growth haven't been paid, or even honestly considered, for a couple decades now. Existing homeowners are asked to build the roads, schools and all the other infrastructure to support growth, or live with the traffic and overcrowded schools. That is an indirect subsidy of the profits of the growth industry, whether we pay it today or a decade from now when our infrastructure has gridlocked.
Of course I'm getting screwed, as all homeowners are. I'm asked to build the roads to support growth. I'm asked to build the schools to support growth. I'm asked to live with the growing densities, lower quality of life, and pay higher energy, water and utility costs to fund that infrastructure too. And I'm asked to pay while developers rake in the dollars building cheezy homes and selling them at market driven prices that provide outrageous profits. I pay while I witness my government cheating and breaking laws to shift all those costs to me, and then blackmail me with threats of even further quality of life reductions if I don't give them more. And all while governments pick and choose who can build and which of their friends will get the breaks.
If a business moves to the suburbs, are you going to make them pay to widen the roads to support the increased traffic, or will you ask me to pay for it too? And if they don't want to pay, are you going to deny them their right to locate within an urban area where the infrastructure is in a better state to support them?
I live near a Master Planned Community of 10,000. There aren't 100 residents of this community employed here, but getting on the same rural roads every morning to work in Redmond, Seattle, or other points west. There are miles of backups every morning, but no money or serious plan to fix the problem. Now multiply this quarter billion dollar problem by hundreds throughout the county.
How much growth are people willing to accept? Ever lived in Southern California? Who wants to live in an urban area where city boundaries are invisible, but no more than driving through a congested intersection? Then what happens when we can't grow anymore, roads gridlock and businesses leave?
Growth in not perpetual. It can't be. But it can destroy a region and is destroying this region. Making growth pay its way is just one way to mitigate the adverse impacts of growth on quality of life and the taxpayer. Without a cost, though, unrestrained growth is a parasite that will eventually kill any region where it is allowed to thrive.
Posted by: MJC on March 15, 2006 11:40 AMStreets are a fundamental and basic serice. They should be funded ahead of any and all other DISCRETIONARY programs.
Nickels is the worst kind of Mayor. He should be a posterchild to our youth of what happens to your brain when you eat too many donuts. The gross, excessive fat pinches off critical bloodflow to your brain.
Seattle is getting $50'ed to death. Everything is "only another $50".
Reprioritize Mayor FatA$$.
No new taxes!!!!!!!
Yes, supply and demand has fueled the price of the house, but never, ever do impact fees come out of developer's profits. Unless, of course, you say the cost of building roads, sewers and water lines also come out of developer profits. If so, your statement is correct.
Every developer I know and I know 100s add impact fees onto the price.
Posted by: swatter on March 15, 2006 03:05 PMIf the Seattle-oids want a damn tunnel so bad, they can pony up the difference in cost, including any overruns (and there will be overruns. Just ask Boston.)
Posted by: Heartless Libertarian on March 15, 2006 03:49 PMOn the other hand, this is probably a great place for the latte tax. I don't know how many times I've had coffee shoot out the little sip hole in my Starbucks cups from hitting a Seattle pothole....
Posted by: Marc on March 16, 2006 12:57 AM