RTD’s board of directors will wait until March 8 to decide how much of a sales-tax increase it will ask metro Denver voters to approve to bolster the financial condition of its FasTracks transit expansion.
Regional Transportation District directors had planned to vote on a tax-hike level Tuesday, but RTD board chairman Lee Kemp said in a recent letter to fellow directors and agency staff that some local government officials and business leaders need more time “to perform critical data collection and analysis that will have a significant impact on the board decision to go to the ballot.”
The FasTracks program, which now carries a $6.7 billion price tag and includes six new train lines for the metro area, is at least $2 billion short of what it needs to be completed by the end of this decade.
Earlier this month, the Metro Mayors Caucus, which includes about 40 mayors in the Denver area, urged the RTD board to propose a doubling of the current 0.4 percent FasTracks sales tax as a way to close the funding gap and complete all elements of FasTracks by 2019.
The mayors acted after hearing results of a Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce-sponsored poll that suggested area residents want FasTracks finished sooner rather than later, and that they are willing to pay for earlier delivery of the project with higher taxes.
While the mayors have endorsed a tax increase of 0.4 percentage points, RTD’s staff has recommended that the board propose an increase of half that — 0.2 percentage points.
In pitching the smaller increase in the FasTracks levy, RTD planners note that if it is approved by voters, as much as 90 percent of FasTracks could be finished by 2022 and all of the program by 2027.
Among the mayors, key opposition to the 0.2 percentage-point proposal came from officials representing communities in the U.S. 36 corridor, who most likely would not see completion of the northwest commuter train to Boulder and Longmont until 2027, according to RTD’s analysis of the 0.2 percent option.
Still, some business leaders in the area are not confident that voters will approve a doubling of the tax that the mayors are seeking.
“We are doing some additional polling to ‘stress-test’ the potential four-tenths (increase) against some of the negative arguments,” said John Huggins, executive director of the Coalition for Smart Transit, which includes business and environmental groups.
RTD’s Kemp, in his letter requesting more time for polling and other analysis, added, “I know that all of you understand the quintessential importance of getting this right as we have only one chance to do so.”
