Local voters can certainly be excused if they are scratching their heads about the half-cent sales tax that will appear on the June ballot.
The proposed increase — which would bring our total sales tax to 8.75 percent, making us tied with Alameda County and the city of Richmond for highest in the state — was a last-minute patch job that supervisors say is needed to pay for a laundry list of services, including health care, affordable housing and, surprisingly, transportation. The county has been hit hard by state budget cuts, and the tax, which needs only a simple majority to pass, will help, officials say.
But East San Jose Supervisor Blanca Alvarado, the only dissenter in the 4-1 approval of the tax, claims that the county’s transportation needs are traditionally addressed by the Valley Transportation Authority, not the county. “It is very coincidental,” she said suggestively, “that all of a sudden we put transportation in the mix.”
Supervisor Liz Kniss, who represents Mountain View, insists that no promise was made to share a nickel with the VTA. In fact, she told Voice staff writer Jon Wiener this week that she would not vote to transfer any funds to VTA for the BART-to-San Jose project, which she believes should be scaled back to lower costs and attract state and federal grants.
Kniss is 100 percent right. And before any more effort is expended on the immense, overpriced BART project, VTA and county leaders need to reassess our transportation priorities. At $6.2 billion and growing, for a 16.7- mile extension from Fremont to downtown San Jose and on to the airport, it is difficult to imagine where the money will come from to build BART. Supporters of this immense drain on the county’s resources should accept reality and agree to build only a shorter segment, and discard the idea of the ultra-expensive tunneling that would be required to cross downtown San Jose.
When voters who will not benefit directly from the BART project (and that includes all Mountain View voters) consider the half-cent sales tax, Kniss says, they should remember that all county services, including transportation projects, will benefit. That is a start, but we believe that all four supervisors who approved putting this tax on the ballot owe it to voters to explain themselves, especially their commitment to the VTA and BART-to-San Jose project.
It is no secret that the VTA wanted to put its own quarter-cent tax on the June ballot, but polling found that voters were not likely to give it the two-thirds majority needed for passage. The half-cent general county tax, which requires only 50-percent-plus-one approval, was the compromise. Polling on the half-cent tax, conducted by the industry-backed Silicon Valley Leadership Group, is said to show it will pass. The effort will be helped by several SVLG consultants, who will work exclusively to get the tax passed.
The irony in this process is that supervisors Kniss and Alvarado now have serious questions about building BART to San Jose. With just one more vote — possibly Don Gage of Gilroy — the three easily could block any financial support for the project, at least as long as they remain on the board. That is, unless there really was a back-room deal that we don’t know about.
