Have to double-back to an item Mary Newsom blogged on Friday that I thought would merit much more follow up from the Uptown paper of record. Evidently not.
CATS chief Keith Parker has come out and admitted that CATS cannot afford the 2030 transit plan with the current funding formula. Parker wants an as yet unnamed additional source of revenue — wild guess, additional car registration fees — in order to build the system out by 2018.
Technically, of course, CATS long ago admitted the countywide half-cent sales tax was inadequate by first, in the summer of 2007, including $70m. worth of tax increment financing funding in the plans for the $470m. North line commuter rail and then earlier this year pitching a plan to fund all of the cost of $400m. worth of city streetcars likewise from future local property tax revenue.
But never before has CATS actually said that the 2030 plan as a whole, as funded by the half-cent transit tax, was no longer operable. In fact, all throughout the transit tax repeal campaign of 2007 CATS, city staff, and pro-tax campaigners treated any suggestion that the $9b. transit plan could not be funded by the half-cent as a form of civic lunacy. A fantasy whipped up by transit haters and antediluvians bent on shackling Charlotte to an unenlightened past while rejecting the bright promise of limitless tomorrows.
Not to put too personal a spin on this, but I resent being lied to these past 18 months or so. I resent being smirked at and treated like an idiot for pointing out the perfectly obvious. And I was not alone. Smart Growth critic Randall O’Toole came to Charlotte and told all comers that CATS would be back asking for more money if the half-cent were not repealed and a new transit plan adopted. Crickets.
What did make noise was over $600,000 in special interest campaign money and combined weight of city and county government all pressing to save a plan they knew we could not afford. History will judge who was acting out of true civic pride and concern and who put political power and self-interest first.
A naive man would expect an apology. But the wise man prepares for the next lie.