Rebuilding the U.S. 2 trestle and widening Highway 9 will be on a local wish list for road money that’s expected to go before voters next year.
After finding out they could have $340 million more to play with, depending on the voters’ consent, the Snohomish County Council on Monday decided to “think about it” before making any big decisions.
The council has until Friday to recommend which local road projects will be included in the three-county Regional Transportation Investment District, the ambitious road tax package that, along with a similar transit tax package, is expected to go before voters in 2007.
Ultimately, the councils from Snohomish, King and Pierce counties will decide which road projects will go to voters.
Last week, in giving the Snohomish County Council a recommended list of projects for the road tax district, Executive Aaron Reardon informed the council that borrowing capacity was not added into the numbers they had been using for months.
Borrowing – effectively extending the period in which the tax will be collected – would allow the county to seek an additional $340 million, bumping up the amount of tax dollars that would be raised in Snohomish County to $1.72 billion.
Councilmember Dave Gossett on Monday shopped to his fellow council members a project list richer by $340 million, one that was very similar to the $1.73 billion list that Reardon presented to the council last week.
Gossett proposed using the extra room to include a bypass highway around Monroe, widen the middle section of Highway 522 and rebuild several I-5 interchanges, including 88th and 116th streets in Marysville.
Also on Friday, the council will decide what boundaries the road tax district will include. One option is to include the entire county, the other just the urban cities.
Gossett said the county would not be able to match Sound Transit’s boundary, something officials in Snohomish, King and Pierce counties had wanted because it would allow for a single road and transit ballot in November 2007.
If the boundaries don’t match, then the two packages will go on the ballot as separate, but linked, measures. That means that if either package fails, the other one automatically fails too.
Officials from all three counties had hoped to bundle the measures into one. Now that they know they can’t get matching boundaries, they will look to the Legislature for help, Gossett said.
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