SEATTLE — Political forces from throughout the state began Tuesday to craft a plan for making billions of dollars of improvements in transportation in the next decade — and getting voters to agree next year to pay for them all.
Gov. Chris Gregoire and 27 leaders of government, business, construction, labor, environmental groups and transit agencies met for four hours for the inaugural gathering of the Connecting Washington Task Force.
Everett City Councilman Paul Roberts and state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, serve on the panel.
Gregoire created the panel to come up with a plan for making and paying for transportation improvements through 2022. Its proposal will go the Legislature in January with the anticipation that lawmakers will massage it, then put it on the ballot in November 2012.
Tuesday was all about identifying the problems for panelists. Members heard from a number of speakers on the need for money to maintain existing roads, highways and bridges as well as the state ferry system and community bus services. It was also clear there’s too few dollars for building anything new.
“Our roads are at risk of deterioration. We will see pavement problems around the state,” Gregoire said at the outset.
Nearly four hours later, Scott Merriman of the Washington State Association of Counties surprised some panel members when he said elected officials in some communities may let their roads go back to gravel because there’s no money to take care of the pavement.
In future meetings, the task force will discuss ways of educating the public on the extent of the problems and consider various means of raising revenue.
Transportation packages approved in 2003 and 2005 increased the gas tax and other fees for a series of projects around the state. Most of those projects are done with revenue from those measures paying off the bonds sold to finance the work.
The next meeting of the task force is Sept. 9.
Learn more
Reports received by the task force can be found online at http://tinyurl.com/ TransportationPanel.
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