Sonoma County to consider postponing roads tax measure

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider postponing for a second time a proposed quarter-cent sales tax measure to fund maintenance and repairs for the county’s 1,382-mile road network.

Supervisors could decide to delay the measure from a special election in March to a special election in June next year. The cost to the county would be the same, between $400,000 and $600,000, county officials said.

The move appears to be an attempt to buy extra time and avoid a defeat at the ballot box. Supervisors David Rabbitt and Mike McGuire, the original architects of the county’s road repair and sales tax plan, backed the delay.

“We want to do this right and we want to do it once,” said Rabbitt. “I’m fine with waiting until June - the difference between March and June is not that big, in terms of timing and cost and voter turnout.”

Since the board decided in August to delay a November vote on the tax measure to March, county officials said they’ve learned that the current proposal faces what could amount to strong political headwinds.

“Public trust in government, to use new funds wisely, is low,” stated the county administrator’s staff report to the Board of Supervisors.

County officials said they are planning a series of informational meetings in each supervisorial district in the coming months. The goal is better inform the public about the county’s blueprint to repair its crumbling roads and gain public buy-in for the plan.

Assistant Administrator Chris Thomas pointed out that the county wouldn’t use public money to advocate specifically for the sales tax measure.

“But we can educate folks about the status of the county’s roads,” he said.

Sonoma County has some of the worst roads of any county in the Bay Area. The problem is concentrated in unincorporated areas, where almost two-thirds of the roads are in poor or failing condition, according to a 2013 report by the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The sales tax measure would generate $20 million per year over 20 years for county and city road repairs. If approved, the county would receive $8.7 million per year, putting the total county investment in road upkeep over the $20 million mark officials say is needed to improve current conditions.

The county’s long-term maintenance backlog is estimated at $268 million.

In the last three years, the county has allocated an additional $8 million annually in general fund dollars for roads repair and construction, for a total of $16.5 million in annual road spending. Supervisors this summer voted to add $1 million a year from the general fund for roads starting in July.

Michael Troy, co-founder for the advocacy group Save Our Sonoma Roads, said the organization is still analyzing the new proposal, but said he would support a delay if more time would increase voter support.

“We think it’s really important to have this revenue to get the roads fixed,” Troy said. “It would be hard to bring it back for another vote if it went up in March and didn’t pass.”

In addition to the ballot measure timing, supervisors are set to consider shortening the 20-year sales tax measure to five years.

Rabbitt and McGuire said the scaled-back proposal could increase voter support for the tax increase. If approved, the county would enter into a contract with the Sonoma County Transportation Authority, which would oversee and distribute funding for the county and its nine cities. The county could seek to extend the tax after the first five years, officials said.

“We could come back in five years and say to voters ‘Look what we’ve done,’ before asking to reauthorize it,” Rabbitt said.

Rabbitt added that the delay to June would provide more time for county officials to drum up support at the municipal level. Some cities have added tax measures to this November’s ballot and have criticized the county’s proposal. The Petaluma City Council, which formally opposed the county plan, placed on the November ballot Measure Q, a one-percent sales tax which would raise the city’s sales tax rate to 9.25 percent.

“We want the cities to be whole-heartedly in support of this, since 56 percent of revenue from the measure would go to them,” Rabbitt said.

Supervisor Shirlee Zane criticized the delay, saying she originally preferred the tax measure remain on the November ballot.

“My concern in waiting until June is that we’re going to have more people lobbying us to do other things with the money, and I don’t want to see it diminished,” Zane said. “Whenever you have more time, you have more opposition, so they’ll have to make their case why they need the extra time.”

You can reach Staff Writer Angela Hart at 526-8503 or angela.hart@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ahartreports.