Getting real on roads
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he Top of Utah's booming economy is a wonderful thing, we can all agree. But there is a price to pay: Growth ain't cheap.
More people, more homes and more businesses mean a need for more schools, more roads, more transit, more police, more firefighters, among other things. And that means higher taxes.
The roads part of the paying-the-piper truism will get a test drive in November at the ballot box. (Or should we say "touch screen"?) On Tuesday, the Davis County Commission OK'd the placement of a ballot question asking voters to approve hiking their own sales taxes by a quarter of a cent for roads and corridor preservation. Weber County will probably soon follow suit.
This is not to be confused with the $10 increase in vehicle registration fees already enacted by commissioners in Davis and Weber counties. That money is dedicated exclusively to corridor preservation, whereas only 25 percent of any quarter-cent sales tax increase could be used to buy land for roads.
Taxpayers can be forgiven for feeling like there's a discussion of some new tax increase every few months -- that's not far off.
But the reality of the situation is that land prices are exploding along with the population, and so are construction costs for expanded or new roads necessary to accommodate more people and their cars, and more trucks and vans to deliver goods and services required in the new neighborhoods being built everywhere you look.
This quarter-cent sales tax hike is an effort for counties to keep pace with their transportation needs. While we continue to see progress made on I-15 expansion, it will also be important to widen east-west routes through the mushrooming residential, retail and commercial developments fanning out across western Davis and Weber counties. And the primary north-south route in the area, State Road 108 -- also known as Midland Drive or 3500 West in Weber County, and 2000 West in Davis -- is already seeing some improvement, but miles more need attention in the short term.
Lastly, there's the matter of purchasing Legacy North right-of-way between Farmington and, eventually, Box Elder County. Prices for raw land have more than doubled -- and in some areas, tripled -- over the past decade or so. Buying it up soon will save taxpayers lots of money in the years and decades ahead.
We hate the thought of higher taxes as much as anyone. But we're realistic about the transportation crisis we'll face if we don't act now.
The only thing we'd like to see in addition to this emphasis on roads in the Top of Utah is an effort to use the coming FrontRunner commuter rail as the backbone of an expanded and more convenient system of Utah Transit Authority bus service in the years ahead, and the possibility of light rail lines where it would make sense to move large numbers of people between commuter rail and significant hubs of business activity -- like Hill Air Force Base and substantial industrial and/or business parks.
We'll have more to say on the subject of the proposed transportation sales tax increase in the months ahead, as Nov. 6 draws nearer. For now, we thank the Davis County Commission for placing it on the November ballot, and are pleased to see that the Weber County Commission appears poised to do the same.
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