With light rail, better Sounder service and more buses on the menu, Sound Transit is gearing up to ask voters if they are hungry for a second serving of transit projects in the Puget Sound region.
New projects mean new taxes, however.
The agency’s finance committee got its first look on Dec. 1 at the taxes voters could be asked to pay for the proposed second course.
By raising the sales tax rate by a half-cent, the agency would collect a maximum of $8 billion for transit in Sound Transit’s taxing district, which includes Snohomish County’s I-5 cities. About $1 billion of that would be spent in Snohomish County. The cash would be collected from 2007 to 2025.
Sound Transit could also put forth smaller sales tax packages that would raise less money, said Brian McCartan, the agency’s deputy director. The legislation that created Sound Transit allows the agency to collect a sales tax of nine-tenths of a cent on every dollar. It currently collects four-tenths of a cent.
“My guess is that we’ll pick something in the middle, something that is palatable and balances what we want to do with what we can actually afford,” said Richard Marin, a Sound Transit board member and Edmonds City Council president.
The sales tax revenue scenarios don’t include how much money the agency could borrow. Bonding capacity estimates won’t be given until the agency has a more focused project list with price tags attached.
Although a decision hasn’t been made to move forward with a second phase of Sound Transit, the agency has asked its staff to prepare a tax package that could go before voters next November. To do that, agency staff has to present a tax package with a winnowed-down list of projects to the board of directors by July.
Lukas Velush is a reporter with The Herald in Everett.
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