Placer is dropping '08 sales tax vote

Placer County officials are backing off plans to put a transportation sales tax measure on the 2008 ballot, saying polls show not enough voters support it.

If approved, the half-cent tax would have raised more than a billion dollars over 30 years for road expansion and maintenance, as well as improved transit in the fast-growing county.

New polls, however, indicate voter support has dropped from about 70 percent a year ago to 58 percent, proponents disclosed this week.

That's far short of the 67 percent approval rate needed for enactment.

"It's just not going to happen in 2008," Rocklin City Council member Kathy Lund said Wednesday.

Lund said it turns out only 18 percent of voters were even aware the measure was in the works, despite years of lead-up discussions and community meetings soliciting residents' opinions.

"I learned we have a lot more outreach to do before we take this to the voters," Lund said.

She and other city and county leaders on the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency board are expected to agree next week to postpone the vote.

Agency director Celia McAdam said she will suggest the board consider building voter support to put the measure on the 2010 ballot.

Several larger California counties, including Sacramento, have enacted similar sales tax measures.

"It's frustrating," McAdam said. "We've been working hard to deal with our transportation problems and not just put Band-aids on them when we get to gridlock."

Former County Supervisor Jim Williams, who had planned to help head the campaign, said the measure may have lost support because residents have seen the county make progress at key bottleneck points without resorting to new taxes.

Those include a new overpass and tunnel at Douglas Boulevard and a new eastbound lane on I-80 through part of the area's infamous Roseville bottleneck.

But without a new revenue source, "there aren't any other funds coming for a while," Williams said. "This is vital to our economy."

Other local leaders, however, said they are pleased the concept appears headed for a rethink.

Rocklin Vice Mayor Brett Storey didn't like the measure as proposed, arguing the project list was overloaded and there wasn't enough financial accountability.

"I think we need to pare it down," Storey said. "It's belt-tightening time."

Placer County transportation officials say they still expect to build major parts of a couple of key projects in the next few years.

That includes adding more lanes to Interstate 80 in both directions between Riverside Avenue and Highway 65.

However, agency head McAdam said without the ballot measure funding, one of the four lanes contemplated in that expansion would have to stop miles short of what was originally planned.

McAdam said the county should have enough federal and state money to build an under-sized, two-lane version of the Lincoln bypass project, which would relieve Highway 65 congestion around Lincoln by looping south of the town.

The long-discussed Placer Parkway remains unfinanced, McAdam said. That road would connect Highway 65 in Roseville to highways 70 and 99 in Sutter County.

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