City Council Trims Mayor's Tax Proposal

Remember the Mayor's big fat tax package that I've mentioned here a couple of times? Apparently the City Council wants to put it on a diet. The tax package, that is.

Seattle City Council members are poised to cut Mayor Greg Nickels' $1.8 billion transportation improvement package by 23 percent in hopes that the slimmed-down proposal will be more acceptable to voters.

The council on Monday will discuss the counterproposal, which would trim the mayor's 20-year spending plan for major road projects and street and sidewalk repairs by more than $15 million annually.

The taxes to finance the work also would be shaved under the council proposal. It would retain the $25 annual per-employee tax on businesses in the mayor's plan, but would reduce its property tax, which would need voter approval, by 26 percent.

The council plan also would cut the mayor's proposed 10 percent parking tax to 8 percent while phasing it in over three years, instead of imposing it immediately, and would add some exemptions.

The council proposal also calls for an oversight committee to conduct an evaluation — most likely after the first six years of the program — of how well the money is being spent and possibly to recommend whether the taxes should be continued.

The changes reflect discomfort among council members with the original size of the mayor's proposal and a strong lobbying effort by the parking industry against the parking tax Nickels proposed.

"Our concern was voter fatigue," said Councilman Richard McIver, who said he supports almost all of the revised package. "I think (the change) gets it down to a cost I think is reasonable to the taxpayer."
...
Nickels' staff has said in the past that to cut the mayor's package would mean the backlog couldn't be eliminated.

Is there any doubt that the line will be "pass this huge tax package or watch the roads crumble"? That's pretty much the usual mode of operations around here lately, right? It hurts my head to think of how many new transportation taxes we'll be blessed with here in the next few years. It's not that I'm against transportation improvements/maintenance, it's just that I'm still not convinced that the 1.4 billion dollars they're already collecting is being well spent, so why should we trust them with billions more?

(Larry Lange, Seattle P-I, 07.15.2006)