Learn more about proposed half-cent sales tax for South Placer traffic projects | Opinion

The following interview was conducted by members of The Sacramento Bee Editorial Boards and Matt Click, the executive director of the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The Sacramento Bee: Can you tell us about the measure?

Matt Click: South Placer Traffic Relief measure is a one half cent transportation use tax. It’s not for all of Placer County, it’s for the cities of Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln. If passed, the money will be raised in that district, and it also has to be spent on transportation projects only benefiting that district.

It’s forecast to generate $1.58 billion over 30 years to be spent fully on an expenditure plan which has already been approved in all six municipalities in the county. That expenditure plan was passed unanimously in Roseville, Rocklin, Lincoln and by the Board of Supervisors. There’s different categories of projects: major roadways and highways (that’s 52% of the funding), then there’s funding for rail and transit, active transportation, bicycle pedestrian projects and 25% is set aside for local transportation projects. Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln can use the money for whatever they need as long as it meets a transportation purpose.

Placer County is the largest county in California that is not self help. We’ve got 25 self help counties in California, Placer being the largest without a measure. We really have to start by helping ourselves, and that’s what this measure seeks to do — not only raise those hard, real dollars, but also allow us to have local matching to go after competitive grants, either at the state or the federal level.

Bee: What is a self help county?

Click: A self help county is one that has a local sales tax authority and a measure to fund transportation.

Bee: Could you give us a sense of the opposition to this, especially when all of us are feeling like we’re taxed too much?

Click: As far as the politics from the local elected officials, we enjoy very broad support. They understand how important transportation is for quality of life.

In the last 20 months, I’ve had roughly 100 meetings where I’ve gone and talked to the general public. There’s large recognition that this is needed, and generally there is support of it. We did do polling in April, and it was right at two-thirds support.

There are the classic “no new taxes” folks who say, “We already pay a lot. Why don’t you just go get more money from Sacramento?” I can understand how they feel about that, but these are the rules of the game. There is no bucket of money inside of the state coffers that is going to prioritize or fund these things.

And 25 counties have already done this — some started in the early 1970s. So there’s not a lot of sympathy in the legislature. If we want to get those monies back that we send to Sacramento and get our fair share, we have to have a matching funding source.

Bee: For residents who may be on the fence about this measure, are there immediate benefits they will see reaped with this money?

Click: There are very near-term projects that are all but ready to go if we were to have funding. The number one example of that is State Road 65 — by far the most congested bottleneck in Placer County. We have that project fully environmentally cleared and have design plans for a section of it. That’s a project we’ll be able to break ground and go to construction on in 2026.

The other thing that this measure gives us is bonding authority — a financing mechanism we don’t have now. What that means is that instead of us having to wait four or five years to save up $100 million, we could go to the market, borrow against that revenue and deliver very large capital projects much sooner.

Bee: There would be an independent citizens oversight committee and independent audits of the measure. Can you speak more to that?

Click: There will be a four member committee — a citizen from the county, and then one from the three municipalities —that will have absolute independent oversight. The books will be open, and they will be able to see how all the money comes in and how that money is spent. In addition, those sales tax dollars will have their own annual audit.

Bee: This measure will work out to approximately $10 per month for the residents of Rocklin, Roseville and Lincoln. Is that correct?

Click: It does, but this is very difficult to calculate. If you talk to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which I did, they’ll tell you, that about a third of all taxes are paid business to business. It’s not paid by families. It’s paid in business transactions.

Bee: Can you characterize the state of the infrastructure and where the greatest needs are currently?

Click: The greatest needs are really what’s yet to come. We have another 20,000 to 25,000 homes that are approved and ready to go, including a new full campus of Sacramento State University. I’m focused on the deficiencies right now, but I’m also focused on not getting behind.

From a deficiency perspective, regional highways are critically underfunded.

Bee: Is adding more lanes a greenhouse gas concern?

Click: If you look at our entire portfolio of projects we want to fund with the sales tax measure, most of them are safety projects looking to solve for performance and safety issues where there’s an absolute horrendous amount of congestion and where you have a pretty high accident rate. The projects we’re looking at doing on the roadway side are environmentally cleared. So we feel we’re good to go.