Don’t tell the Valley Transportation Authority that the sales tax it was counting on for tens of millions of dollars a year failed miserably.
Though voters in Mountain View and throughout the county rejected Measure A last week, in large part because of concerns about the costly and underfunded BART extension to San Jose, county transit officials are not about to give up on the project that voters approved in 2000.
Last Thursday, in a public meeting at Mountain View City Council chambers, a VTA task force charged with reprioritizing the billions in projects promised to voters under 2000 Measure A recommended pressing ahead — despite serious concerns about cuts that will be made if other funding sources do not come through.
They’re mad,” said Mountain View Vice Mayor Greg Perry, a VTA board member himself and the only dissenter in the 11-1 vote that originally established the task force.
A parade of transit watchdogs requested that the five-member task force reconsider its plans in light of the sales tax measure’s surprising defeat. The VTA board has repeatedly refused to make contingency plans that do not assume a new quarter-cent sales tax.
County Supervisor Liz Kniss — who warned before the election that the BART project would survive a Measure A defeat but county social services would not — said VTA is legally obligated to deliver all of the projects it promised in 2000, including BART-to-San Jose.
“We don’t have a choice,” said Kniss.
County Supervisor Don Gage, who represents the county on the VTA board along with Kniss, agreed.
“The issue is that the voters have spoken, and that’s what I’m going to do, however painful that is to the county or the VTA,” said Gage, whose district includes Gilroy and Morgan Hill. Gage has expressed strong opposition to the BART project.
“That’s what I’m going to do until the voters tell me otherwise. If people are not satisfied with 2000 Measure A, put an initiative on the ballot and change it.”
VTA has already sunk about $270 million into preliminary engineering and right-of-way acquisition for the project, which is built on custom-gauge rail that critics say unnecessarily drives up costs. The plans also include a tunnel under downtown San Jose that will cost so much, and carry so few riders, that the agency has had to exclude it from its application for federal funding.
At the same time, the agency is building the line from the southern end first, despite calls to consider building only the northern portion of the line or doing the whole project in phases.
VTA general manager Michael Burns said the transit agency’s plan only assumed the revenue equivalent to a new quarter-cent sales tax, roughly $80 million per year. He said state infrastructure bonds on November’s ballot could provide another possible source of money, and that VTA could always come back and ask voters for another tax.
The full VTA board was expected to approve the recommendations at noon on Thursday, June 15, after the Voice went to press.
How Mountain View voted
Mountain View voters rejected Measure A by a 4-3 margin, voting in step with the rest of the county on the half-cent tax, which would have funded a host of transportation projects and social services.According to preliminary results obtained from the County Registrar of Voters, Mountain View residents cast 4,793 votes for the measure and 6,404 against it. Palo Alto was the only city in the county where voters supported the tax, by a 51 to 49 percent margin.
On the whole, voters in the North County district — represented by Liz Kniss, who campaigned hard for the measure — voted only 38 percent in favor. In fact, the only one of the five districts to support the measure was the East San Jose area represented by Blanca Alvarado — the only supervisor to vote against putting the tax on the ballot. Alvarado had cited concerns about the process by which Measure A came about.
Mountain View
4,793 For (43%)
6,404 Against (57%)
Palo Alto
7,600 For (51%)
7,411 Against (49%)
E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com
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