News

Hold the Bus!

Proposed sales tax would support Whatcom transit services

By Tim Johnson · Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Bus ridership in Whatcom County has been soaring, bucking trends around the state and elsewhere. Revenues, however, have been on the decline due to a constellation of factors, centering mostly around the persistently flagging economy.

Between 2006 and 2009 ridership on Whatcom Transportation Authority buses increased by 52 percent, according to WTA General Manager Richard Walsh. The agency had a total of 4.93 million rides last year, just shy of the “magic mark” of 5 million, Walsh said.

But bus fares alone can’t keep the system running. About $9 of every $10 WTA receives comes from sales taxes, which have been lagging in the recession. The agency already raised fares last October, boosting a cash fare from 75 cents to $1 and a monthly general public pass from $20 to $25.

Now the WTA board and supporters want to test the degree to which Whatcom voters want to support that service. A group of community leaders have formed a committee called The People for Whatcom Transit, or Transit Works. The goal of Transit Works is to ensure WTA’s continued ability to provide public transportation by raising local sales tax an additional .02 percent. The measure will appear on the ballot in April.

The tax increase would go toward maintaining service and fleshing out the aging WTA fleet.

“Ridership is up because of a number of factors,” Walsh explained. “WTA went through major reorganization of its service since 2004. We’ve created the high-frequency GO lines and reoriented much of our other service. I think transit is now more convenient in the more densely populated parts of the county.”

Another factor, he said, is rising fuel costs, “which I think caused people to seek cheaper alternatives to their automobile. Related to that, a downturn in the economy has caused people to look for more affordable transportation.

“In one way,” Walsh said, “we couldn’t have set this up better, reorganizing our service at the same time people were looking for alternative ways to reorganize their transportation choices.”

Western Washington University students account for about 73 percent of the increase, the result of annual passes being included in students’ tuition. While increases on routes serving WWU saw the largest ridership gains, students boosted ridership throughout WTA’s system, not just on routes serving WWU.  Two-thirds of WTAs 25 non-WWU routes experienced ridership gains of 20 percent or higher.

The transit agency won an award for its efforts to grow ridership from the Federal Transit Administration at the FTA’s annual conference last year, one of only three transit agencies in the state to receive such an award. The other Washington State award recipients were Intercity Transit in Olympia and Community Transit in Everett.

“Our agency has the highest passengers-per-trip rate in the state,” Walsh said.

“It’s the fiscally conservative, responsible thing to protect your assets,” Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike observed in support of the sales tax levy. Pike serves as co-chair of the Transit Works committee, along with Nooksack Mayor Jim Ackerman.

“This very small tax increase protects the very huge investment we’ve made as a community. As someone who used to work in transportation planning, I can tell you that we can lose millions of dollars’ worth of investment by failing to do this,” Pike continued.

“We’ve spent the past five years improving service to the community,”  Ackerman agreed. “Everything we’ve done is working. We’ve got the highest ridership increase in the nation and one of the highest rates of productivity in the state. The last thing we want to do at a time like this is cut the service back,” he said.

Support for the levy appears strong, Walsh noted. A survey of 824 households in November indicated 56 percent of residents support a sales tax increase to maintain or improve transit service. Only 22 percent of respondents support a reduction of service, according to the survey conducted by Redhill Group consultants.

A second survey, which polled only those using WTA service, found not only overwhelming support (79 percent) for an increase in bus service, but a deep satisfaction with service riders already receive.

Transit supporters successfully placed a measure on a 2001 ballot to increase sales tax by .03 percent as replacement for motor vehicle excise taxes, which funded about 45 percent of the state’s transit systems. Voters tossed out the MVET with the passage of Initiative I-695.

The levy proposal is not without building opposition, however.

Last month, former Bellingham mayoral candidate and KGMI radio personality Brett Bonner announced he’d formed a new group, People for Progressive Transportation, to oppose the sales tax increase. Bonner sponsored an initiative last year to limit Whatcom County government’s access to tax revenues.

“We are in favor of a sustainable public bus system and support the WTA staff and managers,” Bonner said in a press release. “They are not proposing the tax increase. It is the WTA Board that wants to raise their portion of our sales taxes rate by over 30 percent. Our group thinks that now is not the right time for such a tax hike.”

It was unclear from his press release who else is involved in Bonner’s new group. A board has not been announced, nor has fundraising begun in earnest for the campaign against the levy. Bonner said his PAC was formed to ensure that both sides of the issue are presented to the public so voters can make an informed decision.

“Bonner attempts to paint a disconnect between the WTA board, who approved placing the issue on the April 27 ballot, and the WTA’s staff and managers,” said Jason Heck, a campaign coordinator for the Transit Works effort.

“Bonner also takes a stab at the levy’s desire to raise taxes 30 percent,” Heck said, “but neglects to mention that the 0.2 percent sales tax increase would only be 20 cents on a $100 purchase. He states that there is general consensus among economists that it is bad policy to consider additional funding to maintain important public transportation service during a recession. This is flawed reasoning, especially at a time of economic crisis when the WTA’s ridership is at
an all-time high.”

“The WTA has enough in reserves to cover any shortfalls for the next two years without cutting service,” Bonner countered. “There is no crisis. At the beginning of 2010, the organization had over $20 million in the ‘Rainy Day Fund.’ Since we have enough in reserves to last until 2012, and to bridge the gap.”

Heck mocked Bonner’s depiction of WTA’s reserves “sitting in a vault somewhere.”

“This is a combination of fuzzy math on how much money the WTA has set aside in their reserves, and rosy economic projections on how fast sales tax revenues will recover,” Heck said. “In better economic times, the WTA has saved reserve funds for operational emergencies, such as this, as well as for major capital expenses. It currently forecasts that these reserves will be reduced to a critically low level by 2012.”

WTA has already cut 1.9 million dollars from its 2009 and 2010 operational budgets without reducing services.

Public transportation, Pike observed, “is essential for the young and the old; and it is a great option for the rest of us. Even if we don’t use it ourselves, it gets people off the road who are ahead of us.”