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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

February 26, 2006

Undone Deal

Officials must move forward on tax, park district

Editorial--Last week began with hope a united front would emerge to pass a countywide transportation tax to fix our deteriorating roadways. It ended instead with verbal sparring peppered with words like "extortion" and at least one unreasonable demand by growth-control allies.

On Tuesday, Solano County's Board of Supervisors will likely vote to put on the June ballot a third attempt to raise local funding for road improvement, new transit options and safety measures. It will be a third try to add a half-penny to the sales tax to raise $1.6 billion over the next 30 years.

The question is whether it will be a unanimous vote and an undivided campaign, or a split vote that may create just enough opposition to doom the measure again.

Issues that separate the two sides - a majority of elected officials on one side and a two county supervisors on the other - have little to do with what the transportation improvement plan would do. It has everything to do with ensuring better roads do not spur headlong development. In the past, Supervisors Duane Kromm and Barbara Kondylis, and a cadre that includes the Greenbelt Alliance and the Orderly Growth Committee, have opposed two previous tax measures to fix the roads. They were able to carry enough voters with them to the polls to garner one-third of all ballots cast. And that is all it takes to kill the plan to fix the interchange at Interstate 80 and I-680, make Highway 12 safer, repair city streets, add transit choices for seniors and the disabled, improve ferry service, and fill in those potholes from Dixon to Vallejo.

It failed by the slimmest of margins two year ago. And there is nothing to indicate the next one can get over that hump with an organized opposition.

So what needs to be negotiated?

• Perpetuating Proposition A, the 30-year-old land-use policy that says cities should be where we grow, not open rural land;

• Instigating a countywide park district to manage and expand open space preservations that separate cities; and

• $150,000 in cash.

On Proposition A, there is little disagreement among mayors and voters that growth should occur in the cities. That's where we put businesses, houses, schools and job centers. There is almost no disagreement here.

In the south county, Vallejo, Benicia and Fairfield like the park district idea, since there's already open space set aside that needs to be managed and protected. In the north county, Vacaville and Dixon officials are scratching their heads wondering what's in it for them. Mostly, civic leaders don't know enough about the district.

The $150,000 is a ridiculous request to somehow force someone to come up with money needed to run a campaign to win voter approve of an extension of Proposition A, if necessary. This one needs to simply go away, so we can focus on the other two.

If you are wondering what Proposition A and a countywide park district have to do with transportation improvements, the answer is simple. Not much. If you subscribe to the notion, however, that better roads will spur runaway growth, then you want Proposition A to restrain it and county parks to remove inventory that might someday become city land. You cannot tie them to the transportation tax, per se.

But our civic leaders could agree to move forward with both. They could agree that they all will support the sales tax, so we can fix the roads and make them safer. They can all agree to support Proposition A and temporarily extend it until the county finishes its overhaul of its own growth blueprint, in three to six years.

We can agree to work on the park plan, but it's way too early to know what it would look like. There can be great benefits from an entity that manages publicly owned open space that separates our cities. But there are power struggles to be avoided.

Too many of us are sitting on a congested freeway, perforated with potholes, or driving along dangerous stretches of Highway 12 waiting for our public officials to wake up, make up and get this deal done.

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