Should Austin taxpayers be able to choose where their road maintenance fees go? One of the most important questions submitted by the League of Bicycling Voters at last night’s city council candidate forum was related to the Transportation User Fee or TUF. The TUF is a small fee of around $5 (well, $4.97) added on to all city utility bills. You can, however, get an exemption from having to pay the fee if you don’t own or use a car and ask for it.
The League of Bicycling Voters put out the idea that instead of opting out of the fee, maybe cyclists could choose to specify that their fee went to cycling projects in the city. “No way” was the answer last night from every single city council candidate. “we need that money for road maintenance.” It’s true that Austin needs more money for road maintenance. Hell, travel on any road in south Austin and you can tell right away. But if the city just can’t live without this money, why let people opt out at all?
Since it looks like the TUF-allocation idea is a non-starter no matter who wins May’s election, what then? Austin cyclists have two ways to go, from what I can see. The first way would be a kind of “civil disobedience” reaction – organize thousands of bike riders to opt out of the fee en masse and see how the city reacts. My hunch though is that the council’s first inclination will be to remove the opt-out ability in the first place, if enough people did. The candidates did have a point about road maintenance, if that is really where the money’s going. I don’t know so I guess I’ll just have to take their word for it.
Sheryl Cole, our current councilmember for place 6 (and one that is likely headed for an easy re-election) thought LOBV’s idea sounded a lot like Greenchoice, Austin’s voluntary system where electric customers can choose to pay extra for their preference of renewable power over conventional. Greenchoice basically works by having the city purchase a similar percentage of renewable power as greenchoice users are paying to get – in theory, our transmission line problems from West Texas notwithstanding.
The way the TUF works is not exactly like Greenchoice but I think councilmember Cole was onto a good idea. What if we had an optional additional fee on our utility bills that really would send around $5 into the city’s coffers specified for cycling, pedestrian and other non-car projects? I think this idea could work. Not only that, but it would help us determine the interest in having that infrastructure a lot better than the average bond package does, since most times we just throw as many projects in as possible in order to try and make all interests happy. It’s worth a try.
on Mar 24th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Tough luck on the TUF (Transportation User Fee) going to bike projects? http://tinyurl.com/cbrvqb
on Mar 25th, 2009 at 12:37 am
Directing Austin’s Transportation User Fee (TUF) to cycling projects: http://tinyurl.com/cbrvqb
on Mar 25th, 2009 at 11:52 am
My point–deep down on all this–was that it’s going to be really tough in “these times” to scrounge up anything for bicycling projects unless it comes from bond money, which isn’t likely to pay for something like commuter incentives or public education.
Considering the city had a pittance reserved for public education for bicycling (something like $5,000 this year), it would be nice to have something with the potential to generate $100,000 or so for commuter incentives, education, training, etc. And I’m sure that amount would be a drop in the bucket for what the fee generates for maintenance…I doubt it would have much impact on the backlog of street repairs that already far outweighs what is available.
I also don’t buy the argument from most of the candidate that this sets a dangerous precedent for bad governance, because it lets constituencies determine where tax revenue goes. This is a a “user” fee. What could be the danger….could fans of mystery novels demand that a percentage of library late fees only go toward purchase of mystery novels?
Someone help me out with the danger here, and then maybe I’ll shut up about it.
A protest based on waivers would be nice, but I doubt we’d be able to generate enough waivers to have a significant impact. Still, might be possible.
on Mar 25th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Rob,
I think the key here is getting what is in the draft bike plan funded. I actually think its better for most projects to come from the general fund rather than dedicated revenue streams. It gives the government more flexibility and actually helps keep funding minority projects like bike infrastructure. We just need to keep the heat on the council and city manager to fully fund the program they adopt. If they can’t or won’t do that, they should be held accountable to the promise they made with the document.
on Mar 26th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I agree completely – the problem with ’boutique funding’ is that it excuses the projects from being funded the normal way, which basically places an upper bound on the amount of funding they get.
The even better approach is expanding the ordinance Tommy Eden worked so hard on at the UTC during my tenure (passed by city council, but seemingly only partially adhered to): if the cost of building in the programmed bike/ped facilities adds less than 20% to the overall cost of a street reconstruction project, they must be done at the same time.
Try raising the 20% gradually. 20% was reasonable at the time. Maybe 30% is the right number now. Someday, the number should be completely removed…