Today: Citizens Neighborhood Street Improvement Task Force Meeting

The Citizens Neighborhood Street Improvement Task Force is working over the next couple months to help the City set criteria as it considers raising taxes to pay for street improvements. The task force is charged with creating project criteria for basic street maintenance, pothole repair and citizen safety; developing a project list that is balanced citywide to make sure all neighborhoods receive local street and safety improvements; and to recommend strategies to ensure accountability, transparency, and oversight of street maintenance funds. The next meeting is tonight from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.; they are being asked to report to the Council by the end of the month.

The Task Force’s first meeting was May 29; you can read some of the highlights of that meeting in John Larson’s summary in last week’s Tacoma Weekly. The question for the task force isn’t so much whether a tax should be implemented – that will have to go to the voters in the fall – the task at hand right now is to develop criteria for how the money will be spent if it should pass. Even the full increase will not mean that all of Tacoma’s streets will be fixed in the near future – that would be a huge, and hugely expensive undertaking. So criteria for project selection is one question. Another question has to do with developing strategies that will ensure transparency, accountability, and oversight of the streets fund. No small task.

A tax increase is a tough sell these days, but based on a recent phone survey, and Tacomans’ overwhelming displeasure with the condition of their roads, the City thinks it may have a chance at passing a voter-approved property tax increase. According to a quote from Mayor Strickland in the Tacoma Weekly article, the last time Tacoma voters approved a tax for street improvements was in 1968.

Previously from Exit133: Citizens Neighborhood Street Improvement Task Force First Meeting.