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Casey Jones Council Grabs Streetcar Grant
The Charlotte City Council on Monday night delivered the first installment of a pricey political payoff, when it voted to accept a $25-million federal grant to help build the city’s coveted streetcar project.
The total price tag for the route’s first leg, which will stretch all of 1.5 miles, from Time Warner Cable Arena to Presbyterian Hospital, tops out at $37 million. As a match for the federal grant, the city is kicking in $12 million of general fund revenues that could have been used, instead, to pay for other pressing needs – little things like roads, sidewalks and neighborhood development.
The city took over funding responsibility for the streetcar when officials conceded there wasn’t enough money from the half-cent sales tax for transit to build it, breaking one promise while keeping another.
Councilmembers have consistently made assurances that only half-cent sales tax revenue would be used to pay for transit projects. But during an effort in 2007 to repeal that tax, city leaders had tacitly vowed to expedite construction of the streetcar, to gain support from the black community to defeat the transit-tax repeal effort.
The streetcar route will ultimately stretch 10 miles, and cost upwards of $500 million to build, chugging down Beatties Ford Road and out Central Avenue, through largely minority communities on the city’s west and east sides.
On Monday night, the promise that was made to leap frog the streetcar over other transit projects came due – and so did its bill. The council voted 6-3 to accept the federal grant to kick start construction.
Democrats James Mitchell, Patrick Cannon, Nancy Carter, David Howard, Patsy Kinsey and Jason Burgess voted to accept the grant. Republicans Warren Cooksey, Andy Dulin and Edwin Peacock, along with Democrats Warren Turner and Michael Barnes, voted in dissent.
“This council has now said we are in the transit business,” Peacock said. “Why did we come up with a half-cent sales tax, why did we say we wanted to take a regional approach? Why we did that is because [the city] wanted to get out of the transit business.
“Now we’re back in it,” he said. “It’s debt paid by debt and it’s going to be debt on you as a property owner.”
Indeed, in addition to the $12 million the city is paying to build the streetcar, it will also need to deliver about $1.5 million for annual operating costs. Charlotte Area Transit System officials have said they can’t pay that tab. And city officials don’t know how they will, only that the money will likely have to be pulled, in one form or another, from the city’s general fund.
That struck a sour note with dozens of residents who showed up Monday night to protest the city spending $37 million on a 1.5-mile stretch of streetcar, at the expense of more pressing needs.
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With the federal government trillions of dollars in debt and with the CBO warning of a debt explosion in just a few years, 6 members of the City Council ignore all of this and vote to build a 1930′s transportation system along a route that already has flexible(bus) transit. They vote to ignore the fact that the federal grant money is an unconstitutional taking of resources from an already tax-maxed citizenry…they vote to ignore that this adds to the debt and stifles economic growth…they voted with political blinders fully in place.
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This political payoff will cost the homeowners bigtime. Sad, homeowners will probably never even use the new toy. Government is now the biggest junkie and the real taxpayers keep paying for their fix. How is that hope and change working for you now?
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It was pretty clear at the City Council meeting last night that the Democrats on the council would not be swayed no matter what contrary evidence was presented to them from their Pharoahic obsession of erecting glittering monuments to their glorious leadership (rule?) nor from assisting their benefactors in the development industry in every way they can at the expense of Charlotte’s taxpayers. Even serious safety issues did not sway them from their holy mission of wasting $37 million it taxpayer money (Note: It will probably cost at least twice this if their consistent record for delusional low-balling project costs holds true!)
What was truly pathetic was the collection of pro-streetcar folks who somehow saw this 19th century technology previously tossed out by Charlotte and other cities as an entitlement that evil people were trying to steal from them. The result was that they usually spent their time at the mike spouting absurdities such as claiming that the streetcar was a step into the future (while the hybrid-electric buses suggested by trolley opponents was somehow regressing into the past!) Somehow they all thought they could convert this serious waste of taxpayer money into a benefit by labeling this monstrosity as an investment.
The proponents of the streetcar could not even seem to process the fact that metal tracks in the street represent a serious safety hazard to a whole host of vehicles, in particular two-wheelers. Even braking of autos, etc. are adversely affected when the tracks are wet. They are also a hazard for pedestrians, runners and are even a hindrance for people in wheelchairs trying to cross them. I also wonder how many ambulances will be adversely affected when rushing patients to Presbyterian Hospital. At least they are heading in the right direction!
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[...] from the mayor who spearheaded the push to fast-track a streetcar project years ahead of schedule, committing millions of local dollars to a project that nobody knows how to [...]
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