The FasTracks task force of the Metro Mayors Caucus on Thursday recommended that project backers promote a sales-tax increase of between 0.3 and 0.4 percentage points this year to get the financially strapped transit expansion finished sooner rather than later.
In doing so, the task force shunned RTD’s staff recommendation that fans of FasTracks push for a 0.2 percentage point tax increase in November as a way to complete up to 90 percent of the transit expansion by 2022 and all of it by 2027.
Regional Transportation District planners presented that recommendation to the agency’s board of directors on Tuesday.
But at Thursday’s meeting of the mayors’ group, Broomfield Mayor Pat Quinn said he and some other local government leaders along the corridor of the proposed Northwest commuter train to Boulder and Longmont would have difficulty supporting the 0.2 percentage point tax-hike option because it left the Northwest train as the FasTracks line with the most distant completion date — 2027.
“The way it’s drafted now, Northwest rail is so far out that two-tenths is just impossible for our elected officials to support,” Quinn told his colleagues.
RTD’s analysis shows that if voters were to approve a 0.4 percentage point tax increase for FasTracks either this year or next, the program could largely stay on schedule and be entirely completed by 2019. Such an increase would amount to a doubling of the initial 0.4 percent FasTracks tax that voters approved in 2004.
Recent forecasts of sales-tax proceeds from that initial tax have indicated that RTD will collect far less money from it than originally planned — thus the need for a supplemental levy.
If FasTracks promoters go for a 0.3 percentage point increase, the completion date would likely be around 2023, RTD officials said Thursday.
Business backers of FasTracks, and some public officials, have been leery about asking voters to approve a doubling of the tax, especially with the still uncertain direction of the economy.
One concern, they say, is that FasTracks opponents would jump on such a proposal and market it as a “100 percent tax increase.”
Lone Tree Mayor Jim Gunning suggested to fellow task force members that they consider a 0.35 percentage point increase. The group will present its recommendation of a tax increase of between 0.3 and 0.4 percentage points to the full Metro Mayors Caucus on Wednesday.
Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce senior vice president Tamra Ward said her group needs to do more study to determine if “.2, .3 or .4” would be the appropriate percentage point tax increase to request from voters.
RTD’s board will decide Feb. 22 whether to seek a tax increase this year and, if so, how large it should it be.
Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute and a former RTD board chairman, said of the possible pursuit of a 0.3 to 0.4 percentage point tax hike for FasTracks: “How many times can RTD sell the same lemon?”
The message to local governments in Colorado when “you underestimate costs and overestimate revenues on purpose,” Caldara said, is “get taxpayers a little pregnant on a project and they will bail it out forever.”
RTD officials have said there is no truth to Caldara’s claims on their cost and revenue projections.
The cost of the project with a 0.4 percentage point increase is estimated by RTD to be $6.7 billion for the 2019 finish date, but the alternative 0.2 percentage point increase, according to RTD officials, would grow the construction cost to $7.2 billion because the completion date would be 2027.
The mayors said they will push for “accountability” from RTD to ensure that money raised from a new FasTracks tax will be targeted for construction of the currently unfunded transit lines, and not siphoned off to cover shortfalls that could develop on rail lines that are being built, or soon will be.
RTD says it now has completed about 72 percent of the West Corridor light-rail line to Lakewood and Golden, and about 30 percent of Union Station redevelopment, which were the first FasTracks projects to get construction dollars.
This year, a public-private partnership expects to begin construction of the $1 billion commuter train from Union Station to Denver International Airport. It is due to begin service in 2016.
Also at Tuesday’s task force meeting, RTD political consultant Maria Garcia Berry briefed the mayors about results of recent focus groups held to assess voter sentiment about RTD, FasTracks and a possible tax-increase ballot measure.
“The single most important thing is finishing the system,” Berry said, in recounting the key concern of focus-group participants. “They care more about the end date than the tax rate.”
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
Tax-increase options
0.2 percentage point tax increase: What it means: If approved in November, it would enable completion of up to 90 percent of the FasTracks transit expansion by 2022 and all of it by 2027.
0.3 percentage point tax increase: The completion date would likely be around 2023, RTD officials said Thursday.
0.4 percentage point tax increase: The program would largely stay on schedule and be entirely completed by 2019.
