The Mecklenburg County Commission will officially hear its options tonight with regard to repealing the county-wide, half-cent sales tax which funds CATS to the tune of $50 million a year. Don’t expect commission chairman Parks Helms to be welcoming, but he cannot duck the issue.
To recap, with the South Blvd. line cost estimate now at $463 million, that means the federal contribution of $193 million is only 41 percent of the total project cost. So much for the feds paying for the bulk of the choo-choo.
If Helms really wants to argue that nothing has changed since 1998 and that the county should just stay-the-course with regards to train building, it’ll be more of the good money after bad mindset we’ve indulged since Cityfair.
Prediction: Helms will soon find a way to use “cut-and-run” or some other Iraq analogy to try and shame opponents of light rail into backing down from the repeal drive. A similar stunt worked for transit booster and Parisian-in-exile Tom Cox when he was commission chairman and he called opponents of light rail “Iraqi insurgents.”
