Can counties harmonize rail systems?
Jay Evensen
If the stars align just right over the next few months, that could become a reality. And it's all because several different governments are working on essentially the same problem. It's as if a committee were assigned to write a masterpiece and someone forgot to assign the bass clef notes.
Actually, the committee is spread across two counties, with each operating independently of the other, and one of them might get too tired to write the bass clef.
Utah County voters will have an opportunity in November to approve a quarter-cent increase in their sales-tax rate to fund, at long last, a commuter-rail system originating in Provo. This is the southern leg of FrontRunner, the commuter rail line that eventually will connect southern Utah County with Brigham City, and all points between.
If voters say yes, this will fund a rail line that goes up to the border with Salt Lake County. The only problem is Salt Lake County has yet to find money to connect those tracks from the border up to Salt Lake City. All the focus, and all the funding, so far has been on the first phase of FrontRunner, which will go from Salt Lake City north.
This is where the exhaustion part comes in. All of those measures, if approved, would add $133 per year to the property tax bill of someone who owns a house valued at $200,000, which means a lot of you would pay even more. After all that, would those same voters want to add even more taxes to connect to those tracks at the Utah County line? Or would they tell all those train riders from Provo to just get off at the border and walk?
Where is the inter-county love? Or does love mean never having to say I'm raising my taxes to help you?
To the casual observers, all of this must seem incredibly complicated, not to mention contradictory. On the one hand, we are bombarded by news stories telling us that Utah's economy never had it so good. The state is running a record surplus — $351 million at the end of the last fiscal year — and the governor and state lawmakers are considering a huge income tax cut. On the other hand, local governments are asking people to raise taxes like never before in order to fund long-neglected and important projects.
You can be the first to comment on this story.