As the County Commission is set to vote on Commissioner Gimenez’s proposal to repeal the transit surtax word from County Hall is that it will not pass. Gimenez plans to respond by going straight to the voters via a petition drive to get the item placed on the ballot. In response County Manager George Burgess issued a memo voicing the administration’s strong opposition to the measure, while highlighting the various achievements of the tax.
As celebrity Super Agent Ari Gold says, “You have to manage your client’s expectations.” It is only partially true that the PTP was ‘unmanageable’, as Mr. Burgess claims. Part of his job should have been sounding the alarm bells early on (when he still worked for the Commission) rather than operating under a business as usual mentality. I agree with Mr. Burgess that repealing the tax is a BAD idea, but money was wasted on bloated salaries, free rides, and ‘road improvement’ projects that should never have been funded by the transit tax in the first place. As soon as the administration saw limitations of the tax, they should have cut unnecessary expenses (like the free rides or road improvements = $90 million) in favor of making sure that the long term outlook was good enough to get federal and state funding. They cannot simply continue to pass the buck to the Penelas administration by claiming that the plan was too lofty to begin with. The People’s Transportation Plan is only a first step in providing reliable and convenient mass transit for South Florida – and seven years have come and gone with little actual expansion of the system. The handling of the transit tax and the PTP is symptomatic of the business ethic in this town over the last decade: unrealistic expectations about how much things cost/are worth, coupled with bad management, and an ostrich like mentality that if you ignore a problem for long enough it will just go away.
So where do we go from here?
1. Enough with repealing the tax. It’s here and we need it. For those of us who voted for it, we need to realize that it has been re-purposed for maintenance, free rides, public works projects, minor expansion of metrorail, and major bus improvements. Far from being a financial vehicle for expansion, the transit tax is what we needed to begin with: a dedicated source of funding for the transit system (not necessarily for expansion).
2. Now that there is a way of funding upgrades and maintenance we need a source of funding for expansion. Some commissioners floated the idea of an additional helf-cent sales tax (to be consistent with other metropolitan regions), but considering the bad PR that has come out of the first tax, I wouldn’t hold my breadth. More realistic is to take the item to voters – a ballot measure that would list the top 4 major rail lines to be funded by a bond (similar to the General Obligation Bonds) – and allow people to vote on which one they want. In this way expansion happens incrementally, and expectations don’t go beyond what we can afford.
Mr. Garcia,
I cannot agree with you more. The tax is needed right now as there seems to be no other dedicated fund source. As was stated by some of the commissioners at the meeting when the changing of the tax from ‘new development only’ to ‘daily operations too’ occurred: We need to get our act together here in Miami-Dade before we can even think of getting funding from the federal level. For starters, Kapoor needs to keep a watchful eye on those outrageous bonuses paid with the tax money. Aside from that, our main priority is keeping MDT afloat, and if that means keeping the tax in place, I’m all for it.
I forgot to mention that I think the idea of having citizens vote on which Metrorail line should have priority is an excellent idea as opposed to asking whether or not to keep the half-penny tax. This would allow MDT to get a true feel of what the people want, and not just what the commissioners want to appease the people of their districts.
Speaking of ‘getting the act together’, this ‘show’ was already walked-out on by many a sensible person quicker than a Britney Spears concert (once seeing her now-flabby bottom!). The PTP will go nowhere and have no function other than what was already described by this article: “… re-purposed for maintenance, free rides, public works projects, and major bus improvements.
The suggestion of “managing the client’s expectation” by giving them a say over new Metrorail lines is a preposterous one at best, and an insidiously sad one overall. Miami-Dade is not a community- it is an enclave of various urban factions that fight for resources instead of building together with foresight and wisdom. To reflect the truth, you only have to look at yourselves in the mirror:
What makes economic and transit sense in your metropolis is to extend new lines towards existing and well-traveled systems to alleviate traffic flow, and create a true metro thru-way for large number of commuters. Instead, the clamoring and bickering for “east-west” lines I keep reading about from Herald readers provides only the alternative of a seven-fold project expense and no viable foundation at this time for an economical right-of-way access. But, the people want it, and the customer is always right…
Polo, I would hardly say that the east-west line doesn’t go through any population centers. Look at a map. The fact is that the county is very large and has multiple population centers. This makes planning any transit very difficult because, as you note, everyone wants a piece of the pie. The only way to implement these types of rail projects is one at a time.