More taxes won’t fix road, traffic problems

Here we go again. Our county executive, Bob Drewel, got together with the King and Pierce County executives and came up with a plan to raise $11 billion for transportation projects. They claim it will only cost the average family in Snohomish County $1 a day – all this at a time when we have a growing number of people out of work. They claim that $1.9 billion would go to pay for local road projects such as intersection improvement and new lanes along Highways 9 and 524, interchange improvements along I-5 and carpool lanes on the Hewitt Avenue Trestle. The vast majority of the money would go to the state but some of the money would go to city and county streets as well as park-and ride lots, new ferry terminals and track improvements for commuter rail service to Everett. Haven’t we been paying a hefty tax for commuter rail service? Has anybody tried to ride the phantom commuter train down to Seattle?

They plan to collect this money by increasing the sales tax and vehicle excise tax by 4 percent, thereby adding $75 to our vehicle license fee. Remember the $30 auto license fee we voted for. My $30 fee cost me $75 for my 1997 cab pick-up. It sounds like this might be a good time to write Mr. Drewel, our mayors and our county council members and tell them we have had enough of their extravagant high priced plans which never seem to fix the traffic problems.

Everett

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