Transit supporters are trying to raise $200,000 from businesses to conduct focus groups and polling to help Regional Transportation District directors decide whether to ask area voters for a FasTracks tax increase in November.
“I’m in fundraising mode,” RTD political and public relations consultant Maria Garcia Berry told members of the Metro Mayors Caucus task force on FasTracks this morning.
RTD has a $2.45 billion shortfall in funds needed to build all of FasTracks by 2017, as originally planned.
In 2004, metro Denver voters approved a 0.4 percent sales tax to pay for the project, which includes six new trains in the area and extensions to existing rail lines.
Overly optimistic estimates of sales tax growth and the underestimation of construction costs have put RTD in its financial hole and agency planners say the existing tax must be doubled to keep FasTracks construction on schedule.
Berry warned members of the mayors caucus that voters locally and nationally are fixated on economic issues and intense interviews with focus groups of likely voters are needed to determine whether there will be support for a tax increase this fall.
“There is not a lot of optimism out there,” she said, adding that results of focus group interviews will help in the design of a regional poll to more widely gauge voter support for a tax hike.
Berry said research on the possible tax measure will be conducted through February and by the end of March, enough data will collected for RTD’s board of directors to “weigh all the options” related to asking voters this year, or at some later date, to back the tax increase.
While RTD’s board has not made its decision on an election date, “I’ve made my decision,” agency director Noel Busck told the mayors group. “I’m not going in 2010.”
Busck said the 2010 ballot will be crowded with citizen-initiated measures and that, coupled with the weak economy, suggest a delay in seeking voter support for FasTracks is the better course.
RTD director Bill McMullen, said he largely agreed with Busck.
“We’ve got to go for the win and I don’t think 2010 is the year to go to win,” McMullen said. “I’m kind of leaning to 2012.”
Delaying the tax election would give RTD a chance to try to secure the $1 billion for FasTracks the agency hopes to get from the federal government, he added.
RTD expects to get the billion dollars from the Federal Transit Administration for the FasTracks train to Denver International Airport and the Gold Line train from Union Station to Arvada and Wheat Ridge.
“If the feds don’t buy in, why would the average voter buy in?” McMullen said.
RTD hopes to meet requirements set by the FTA over the next year or so that will guarantee the flow of the federal money, planners say.
Berry has discouraged RTD from considering a tax election for FasTracks in 2011, claiming voter turnout is extremely low in odd-year elections and low turnout would not work in RTD’s favor.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
