There we have it ladies and gents. Buried in the proposed legislative agenda the Charlotte city council will discuss tonight is language from CATS finally admitting what Official Charlotte has denied for years: The $9 billion 2030 Transit Plan adopted in 2006 cannot be paid for with the half-cent transit sales tax.
We have had tacit admissions of that fact before, first with the tax-increment financing component of the $400m. North line which would have re-directed millions in property tax review toward retiring debt issued to pay for train station infrastructure and then with the shifting of the $500m. streetcar project away from CATS and to the city of Charlotte. The city intends to use General Fund revenue — from both property and sales tax — along with found federal money to build the streetcar instead of half-cent transit tax revenue. This move effectively raised the price tag of the 2030 plan to $9.5b. as the cost of the Northeast line to UNCC continued to climb and eat up any wiggle room created by handing the streetcar project to the city.
But never before as the public been told in such clear terms that additional tax revenue must be found in order for the 2030 plan to function.
“The one-half percent sales and use tax is now unable to sustain the advancement of the 2030 Transit Corridor System Plan,” reads the background given city council members. As a result the city should ask the state for “alternate sources of revenue to supplement the local one-half percent sales and use tax for transit” in order to patch an estimated $400m. shortfall. In addition, council is warned that CATS cannot even come up with a completion schedule for the proposed North and Northeast lines unless it gets additional tax authority.
Decoded this means that CATS’ preferred method of dealing with money woes — stringing projects along into the future — cannot work any longer. In even clearer terms, either CATS gets additional tax revenue — perhaps a $5 or $10 per vehicle registration fee routed to transit, surcharges on parking spaces, revenue from Uptown and University City special property tax districts, more sales tax etc. — or the billion-dollar plus line to UNCC cannot be built.
Considering how the line to UNCC has been the very thing the Uptown crowd wanted most — to both tie UNCC to Uptown and jump-start re-development outside the 277 ring into the Belmont neighborhood and up North Tryon — this is nothing less than a call to battle stations. Accordingly, lets see if any member of the Charlotte city council has the stones to vote no on hunting up more transit taxes.
