RTD’s deadline for local governments and business groups to submit recommendations on a new FasTracks sales tax arrived last week with key groups electing to withhold their advice.
The FasTracks task force of the Metro Mayors Caucus canceled a meeting Thursday and chose not to meet the Regional Transportation District’s Friday deadline for generating a formal recommendation on the tax, or for a way to divvy up $305 million in remaining FasTracks money to unfunded projects.
Peter Kenney, spokesman for the mayors’ caucus, said the group had hoped to have some possible guidance for a more formal tax decision from the Coalition for Smart Transit, a business-led organization that has helped raise money for polling to assess the appetite of voters for more FasTracks taxes.
That coalition met Tuesday and chose not to make a FasTracks tax recommendation to RTD.
The coalition wants RTD to come up with its best estimate of what revenues might be secured for FasTracks from other sources before the community is asked to approve more taxes for the project, said Tom Clark, a leader of the group and executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp, an affiliate of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
RTD laid out options
RTD had asked “stakeholders” throughout the area to comment on whether the transit agency should ask voters for a tax increase of either 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 or 0.4 percent to bail out the financially troubled FasTracks program, which is short at least $2 billion of what is needed to get the entire program built by 2018.
Some FasTracks projects, like the East Corridor train to Denver International Airport, have funding, and others, like the North Metro commuter train to Northglenn/Thornton, are largely unfunded at this time.
RTD received responses from 12 groups on ways to move FasTracks forward, said project spokeswoman Pauletta Tonilas.
Asked about the lack of direction from the Metro Mayors task force and the Smart Transit coalition, she added, “We don’t know what to say about that.”
Local leaders are going to have to make “tough decisions” if RTD is to stay on its tentative schedule for taking a tax proposal to voters next November, Tonilas said.
Agreement among regional mayors and other officials is seen as a key first step toward going to voters for the tax increase.
Regional cooperation was credited with helping convince voters to back the original 0.4 percent FasTracks sales tax in 2004.
Eleven days ago, a straw poll of mayors at their FasTracks caucus showed a majority favored asking voters for an additional 0.2 percent tax — with half of that coming from taking over the 0.1 percent Metropolitan Football Stadium District tax, which is due to expire at the end of 2011.
Voters would need to approve the extension of the stadium tax and tacking on the additional 0.1 percent.
While the Metro Mayors Caucus and the Smart Transit committee held back from endorsing a tax level, other groups submitted proposals.
The FasTracks Citizens Advisory Committee, whose members are appointed by RTD, last week backed a 0.3 percent tax increase, “provided the new sales tax will ‘sunset’ as soon as sufficient revenues are produced to build and operate the entire system.”
Favoring north metro area
A coalition of local government officials and business leaders in the U.S. 36 corridor supports asking voters “for a 0.1 percent net increase in the regional sales tax (combined with the expiring 0.1 percent stadium sales tax for a total of 0.2 percent).”
The U.S. 36 coalition also urged RTD to split up the $305 million in remaining FasTracks money entirely among projects in the north metro area that have been starved for funding so far.
In justifying using all of that money for north-area projects, the U.S. 36 group issued a map showing the southern half of metro Denver getting nearly all RTD spending on rail projects — about $3 billion so far — over the past 15 years.
The Southeast Business Partnership, an economic development group for the south metro area, said in a letter to RTD on Friday that “our preference would be to complete the I-225 connector (light-rail line) to the DIA line and the Fitzsimons (medical) complex, along with the Southeast and Southwest (light-rail) extensions . . . as part of an accelerated system build-out.”
RTD’s current light-rail operation in the Interstate 225 corridor ends at the Nine Mile station at Parker Road and I-225. A currently unfunded FasTracks line would take light rail from there to Smith Road and Peoria Street to tie in with the airport train.
Extensions of the existing Southwest light-rail line to Highlands Ranch and the Southeast line to Lone Tree are in the FasTracks plan as well, but these projects do not have funding.
In its letter, the Southeast partnership said while a 0.4 percent tax increase would accomplish a full FasTracks build-out “in the shortest time period, if the political and economic realities demand an alternative solution, we would urge RTD to develop a proposal that has a reasonable probability of voter approval.”
RTD planners say they will take responses from area groups and make recommendations on a sales-tax level, and how to split up the $305 million, to the agency’s board of directors next month.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
