Shortly the voters in the Snohomish County transportation benefit area are going to have the opportunity to vote on Proposition One, which is the sales tax increase for Community Transit. If passed by the voters this will replace approximately $15 million of the $18 million dollars lost when Initiative 695 passed and when the Legislature voted to do away with the funding once the courts decided I-695 was unconstitutional.
There has been a good deal of discussion as to what CT will be able to restore if the voters choose to pass the Proposition 1, but not a whole lot about the ramifications if it does not pass.
The bridge funding the Legislature passed on to the transit agencies was enough money to last approximately a year; this would allow the transit agencies time to ask for an increase in their authority area. The year is close to being up. If this proposition fails, Community Transit will be faced with having to reduce service once again. What that will look like is still being defined. However, once a transit agency reduces service, overhead expenses are cut, but so is the revenue. This is a vicious circle we are all familiar with.
Community Transit makes monthly and quarterly reports to the U.S. Department of Transportation as to its ridership levels and number of trips made on a regular basis. If the reductions in service would require Community Transit to idle a portion of their fleet for a period of time and there would be no hope of finding a new funding source, then Community Transit would be required to sell off the surplus equipment and return those funds recouped to the government.
Once the voters realize at a later date that transit is an intergral part of solving the transportation problems we face and reverse their thinking, it would cost more money to replace the equipment not to mention the current standard one- year wait for a new coach to arrive at the property once it has been ordered.
Do we pay now or do we pay later? Now would be the most prudent while we still have the trained people to operate and repair the equipment rather then have to go through all of the expense of repeating the efforts just to get us back to where we are now.
Financial Secretary
Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1576
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