from Jola and Albert Greiner to the City Council
Contrary to Mr.Tripp’s request to ask you not to impose it, we are in favor of instituting a $20 car tab fee. The main reason is that the county may well impose such a fee before we can and then, predictably, keep most of the proceeds for use off-island. Thus we’ll be paying the fee and not getting our money back. Secondarily, that fee amounts to about 7 gallons of gasoline, a trivial amount. For goodness sake, let’s get some perspective here!
Mostly what I hear from folks is the cynical prediction that at some point in the future, Council or staff will figure out some way to weasel these funds away from road repair and into some other budget item. This is too easily done by reducing normal road repair funding by a like amount. This suspicion may well be the real reason behind citizen opposition. You might address this concern in some effective fashion.
As to raising the fees for building permits, we think further discouraging new endeavors and new residents by raising fees and entry barriers even more (they now both are ridiculously high) is contrary to the City’s best interests. To bring in the relatively small amount of money from increased fees versus much larger possible tax revenues from realty transfer fees and sales taxes on construction does not make economic sense.
We historically have lived on the City’s wee portion of property tax, real estate transfer fees and sales tax proceeds from construction spending. That’s because we have improvidently discouraged new development, retail and businesses, so that is it for our near term revenues.
It seems to us that increasing income by making ourselves attractive to new, younger residents, more construction, tourism and business is what the Council should be thinking of instead of raising the ramparts ever higher.
So, how about reducing the permitting fees, short circuiting the silly regulatory morass and training staff to be vigorously helpful rather than doggedly antagonistic to such revenue raisers?
For the record, here is a list of reasons why I proposed the $20 car fee. I posted this list in the Kitsap Sun comment section under their story about the car fee proposal:
1. Until a Tim Eyman ballot measure abolished State car tabs in 1999, our City received about a million dollars per year from the state, and most of that paid for road work on Bainbridge. A majority of Bainbridge voters rejected Eyman’s 1999 ballot measure, but we were outvoted statewide. So, that meant Bainbridge lost $1.3m per annum for road preservation, and destroyed ferry system finances, leading to 80% fare hikes since then.
2. I agree that we should reduce city expenses before we ask for new revenues. So, we did, and we’ll keep on looking for efficiencies. In 2008, we reduced the $50+ million budget more than $5 million. In 2009, we’ve reduced the budget about $2.5 million. In 2 years, we’ve reduced City staffing by 20%, from 152 to 122. We now have fewer employees per 1,000 population than in any year since our first all-island city budget in 1992. We now need some revenues to compensate for a $1 million decline in real estate excise tax revenues and an 8% decline in sales tax revenues.
3. Experts on roads says that every dollar spent on preserving roads saves $7 in road reconstruction later on. We can pay now or pay more later. Ask any civil engineer, our roads are in bad shape and need preservation. Our Council policy for years has called for $800k in chip-and-seal road preservation per year. We haven’t been able to afford any of that in three years. We devote about $2 million annually to road repairs, pothole filling, trimming road verges, repairing shoulders etc. etc., but don’t have enough revenue for chip and seal preservation.
4. Every dollar COBI receives from the car fees (about $400k per year) will be spent on road work. COBI does road preservation by hiring an outside contractor — the lowest bidder — with the chip-and-seal equipment to come in and do the job. No overhead. It’s all about cost-effective basic service delivery.
5. If we don’t adopt the $20 fee, the County can. Whoever does it first gets to decide where the dollars will be spent. If COBI does it first, we decide which roads — and it ALL goes to our island. If the County goes first, they get the $20, and they decide where to spend the money throughout the county.
6. There’s no administrative overhead locally. The state collects our existing $39 annual car fee. If Bainbridge adopts the $20 fee, the state adds it to the invoice and collects it with the rest of the annual fee.
7. The state rules are already in place. It applies to cars and other vehicles; not farm equipment; not bicycles, wheel chairs or other non-motorized vehicles. Not antique collector cars.
8. I first proposed this idea last year. Most people tell me they favor it. One person put up scores of signs against it, but most people tell me they think it’s a fair and reasonable user fee.
Barry Peters,
City Council member, Bainbridge Island
This is an easy decision from my point of view. If COBI doesn’t collect the $20, the county will be free to do so and they will use it to repair county roads. If COBI does collect it, the money must be spent on BI road projects.
Will the council or city management juggle funds if this new money appears? Sure, that’s their job. But it sounds like there’s not much to juggle out of the road repair budget, since it is currently zero. So let’s fix the potholes and make our roads a bit safer.
Ken Sethney