I guess with Mary Newsom going on sabbatical, it has fallen to Mary Schulken to write completely insane things about Charlotte’s mass transit system.
We are now six months into the confusion — smear? lie? what do you call it? — that advocates of the half-cent transit tax repeal oppose mass transit. Despite repeated attempts to set the record straight, Schulken is at it again today.
Let’s walk through this one last time:
Charlotte is not quite three months away from a referendum that could repeal the tax that pays for its bus service, its first light rail line and mass transit in general. A handful of people who don’t like taxes have used cost overruns and delays on the South Corridor as a chance to make political hay. Others, who either don’t like light rail or public transit, have joined in.
Mary, the 65,000 people who signed the repeal petition is not “a handful of people.” Good heavens! And there is a big difference between light rail and public transit. But it becomes clear why you conflate the two.
Many others simply don’t know what to think. But they know the price tag for the first light rail line, the South Corridor, has ballooned to double its original cost estimate. That’s raised public apprehension about how the project has been managed.
Mary, the public also knows that as $500 million was pumped into trains, the Charlotte road network was ignored. That is a vital part of public upset.
Next Mary slides into a defense of UNCC and, it would seem, a plea for the University to get back into the Save the Tax movement despite the Hauser study mess:
That doesn’t mean foaming-at-the-mouth transit foes who have attacked the findings are right. It doesn’t mean UNCC did anything wrong, either.
It just means, unfortunately, that the university and its leadership have a lot to learn about how to be effective, objective partners when issues get sticky in the glare of the public spotlight.
That’s a blow for Charlotte, whose future as an emerging urban area hinges on having mass transit. It’s also a blow for the university, which urgently needs closer bonds with the city that shares its name.
Notice how those of us with very specific problems with CATS $9 billion transit plan and its five corridors of trains have morphed into “foaming-at-the-mouth transit foes.”
Seriously, what is the point of trying to discuss this issue with the folks down on Tryon? Rick Thames, Ed Williams, Ann Caulkins — all have been repeatedly told that tax repeal does not equal opposition to mass transit. Hell, the paper even ran an op-ed by me making that point back in March after the petition drive suddenly entered the Uptown consciousness.
This is beyond bias arising out of a different point-of-view. We are talking serial mendacity at this point. (Oh, how I cannot wait to read all the “questions about transit” the paper will answer this weekend.)
And one the last time: The UNCC study was junk, its findings meaningless to the question at hand. I don’t intend to mention that damn thing ever again.
More Mary, who ends with a flourish:
The stakes in this debate about the half-cent sales tax are high.
Real cities have comprehensive systems of mass transportation, and plan their development around it. It’s a practical reality.
Charlotte, with an estimated 1.5 million in its metropolitan statistical area, needs mass transit, and that mass transit has to include an extensive bus system and some light rail.
Yet if the half-cent sales tax goes away, much of the bus system’s funding does, too — along with plans for future light rail.
This is a defining moment. If we ever needed a credible source of information, it’s now.
Brilliant. Nothing like a plea for “a credible source of information” after spreading the city’s official propaganda. That is bold. Let’s unpack this junk.
“Real cities” — Charlotte will not be a real city unless the half-cent transit tax survives, tax opponents hate Charlotte. Heard that for months now. Still nonsense.
“Needs mass transit” — The only way to have a mass transit system is to hand CATS $70 million a year in dedicated revenue and keep the $9 billion transit plan intact. Suppress premise much?
“Plans for future light rail” — Those “plans” rapidly becoming a $1 billion reality — and that is the problem. Those plans need future property taxes to make the numbers remotely work. There is no more federal money, certainly not for the $373 million North line.
Who voted for that, Mary?
How can a half-cent transit tax that was supposed to fund a $1 billion transit system possibly pay for a $9 billion transit system?
This is always forgotten, but part of the official reason that costs for the transit plan were not adjusted for inflation back in 1998 is that the revenue side was not either. The thought behind this was that the numbers would “equalize” over time — that if costs went up by 10 percent, revenue would go up by a similar amount.
That has not happened. Instead, costs have outpaced revenue growth many times over. As a result, there are two possible outcomes with the current plan in place: Either CATS cannibalizes the bus system to continue building trains, and Pat McCrory has already indicated that given a choice between buses and trains, he’ll choose trains or we hike property taxes in order to pay for the $9 billion plan.
Those are the facts. Contrary to Mary.
We need a new plan.
