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HomeMy WebLinkAboutR-2005-025 Municipal Transportation InfrastructureRESOLUTION NO, R 2005 - 25 A RESOLUTION of the City Council of the City of Yakima, Washington, seeking State Legislative Action to address funding for municipal transportation infrastructure. WHEREAS, the City of Yakima shares with other Washington cities the converging challenges of maintaining an aging transportation infrastructure of streets, alleys, sidewalks, street lights, paths and signalization systems, while also attempting to expand mobility resources for residents, business investment, economic vitality and future development; and WHEREAS, these challenges are compounded by the erosion of viable public funding resources for transportation even as the needs for funding intensify; for example: • During the 14 -year period since 1990, cities have lost transportation revenue sources; • Recently, cities lost the Vehicle License Fee due to the passage of Initiative 776; • Fuel tax revenues have declined at an average rate of almost 4% per year (in inflation adjusted dollars) due to the restrictive structuring of that revenue source; and WHEREAS, cities' options for transportation revenues are limited at this time, while the demand for transportation infrastructure maintenance and improvement is growing; and WHEREAS, Washington's municipalities do not have sufficient viable funding mechanisms to Implement adequate and appropriate user fees for transportation Improvements; and WHEREAS, the last comprehensive action by the Legislature to provide local options for transportation funding was in 1990; and WHEREAS, at that time, the Legislature, recognizing the need for local transportation funding, authorized four mechanisms: (1) local option fuel tax, (2) commercial parking tax, (3) street utility fee, and (4) vehicle license fee; and WHEREAS, fourteen years later, none of these sources has become a viable mainstay for local transportation funding; and WHEREAS, as the condition of the transportation infrastructure deteriorates, the cost becomes significantly more expensive for repair or replacement, effectively doubling in every 10 to 13 years; and WHEREAS, the cost to the public extends beyond these direct costs in the form of impacts on the quality of life, on the business investment climate, and on the ability to travel without facing delays, detours and congestion; and WHEREAS, the Gap Analysis completed in 2004 estimated the a $2.8 Million shortfall annually for City of Yakima Transportation Maintenance needs; and WHEREAS, many other cities in the State of Washington face similar problems; now, therefore, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF TH N; CITY OF YAKIMA: Section 1. The City of Yakima calls upon the Governor and the Legislature to provide new and appropriate funding tools that may be administered at the municipal level to pay for transportation infrastructure. Section 1 The City of Yakima calls upon the Governor and Legislature to provide additional direct funding generated by the State, for municipal transportation infrastructure. Section 3. The city of Yakima encourages other Washington municipalities to join in this call by passing similar resolutions as a means of conveying the severity and urgency of the situation. ADOPTED BY THE CITY COUNCIL this 1st day of February 2005. ATTEST: Paul P. George, Mayor City Clerk • • • • • • • i • • i i i • • • • • i • • What Our Leaders Have to Say about the Transportation Crisis: "Local streets and roads need helpjust as much as state highways. Without new funding for local transportation projects, maintenance backlogs will continue to grow and the condition of the roads will fall further and further behind." Doug MacDonald, State • Secretary of Transportation • • • • • • s • • i • • • • •• • "One in fourjobs in Washington is dependent upon trade. More than 100,000 agricultural jobs depend on the ability to move products efficiently to our ports from other parts of the state. We can't build a first rate economy on second rate roads." Mic Dinsmore, CEO, Port of Seattle Anatigipa: CIT ENNEIMEM www.awcnet.org (360) 753-4137 Transportation Talking Points • Acting now to reverse the steady decline of our city transportation systems will save taxpayers millions of dollars in the long run. • Washington cities are falling dangerously behind in maintaining city streets and bridges and meeting growing capacity and mobility needs. Significant cuts in state funding, coupled with the Toss of revenue sources, have created a crisis for our local transportation systems. • City population has grown 43% since 1990, compared to 3.5% in unincorporated areas. Washington's cities are home to nearly two-thirds of the state's population. Despite this, transportation funding is increasingly focused on state needs, while neglecting city streets. • Nearly 90% of the state GDP is generated in the state's top 9 metropolitan areas, yet funding to support transportation in these employment centers continues to decline. • To solve these problems, Washington cities need an injection of direct state dollars and new local funding options. The last such action by the State Legislature was in 1990 - when Governor Booth Gardner was still in office. • Cities need at least 5 cents of new gas tax distributions. Even with this addition, it would take 6 years to return state baseline investment to 1991 levels. • It is essential to increase funds for the Transportation Improvement Board (TIB), a key city transportation funding partner. (over) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • What Our Leaders Have to Say about the • • Transportation Crisis; • "The state legislature, cities and counties need to have • • a reasonable discussion on providing local • • transportation funding options." • •• Ruth Fisher, Transportation Commissioner • •• •• "Nearly every trip in this state begins or ends on a city • • street. If we continue to fat/ further and further behind • • in the basic upkeep of our local roads and bridges, our • • citizens and our economy will pay a heavy price for • decades to come. " •• • kill Wilkerson, Director, Community Trade and •• • Economic Development • • • •• "Our cities are where most of ourjobs are. As cities • • collaborate to grow prosperity in every region of our • • • state, their ability to take care of transportation basics • • • is challenged as never before. investment in basic city • i•nfrastructure is a requirement for our state to be as • • • competitive as it can be. " • • Bob Drewel•, Executive Director, Puget Sound • • •Regional Council• • • • "While the State is working to address problems on our • • state highways, we face an equally serious threat on • • our city streets. Freight haulers need both a strong local • • r•oad system and a good highway network to get our • • • products to market, get our people to work and stay • • competitive. if one part of the system doesn't work, the ;, • • entire network begins to fail." • • Larry Pursley, Executive Vice President, Washington • • Trucking Associations • • • • • • • • • ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• • • • • • ••••• Big -city mayors gang up - 2004-12-13 - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) Page 1 of 3 Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) - December 13, 2004 http://seattle, bizjou mals.comiseattlelstori es/2004112/13/story1.htmi Bu§iiiEgg jo EXCLUSIVE REPORTS From the December 10, 2004 print edition Big -city mayors gang up 16 city chiefs have big plans for session Deirdre Gregg Staff Writer Increasingly pressed by vise -tight budgets, and frustrated by a lack of relief from the state Legislature, an informal group of 16 mayors from Washington's largest cities has been meeting regularly to address what the mayors consider to be a variety of crises in the making. The Big City Mayors, as the group has been calling itself, has convened a half-dozen times during the past two years, in locations ranging from Seattle to Spokane. But while early gatherings focused on multiple issues, the group's members this year plan to concentrate their discussions -- and their combined political weight -- on a single issue: transportation. More specifically, the mayors say they want help from the Legislature in repairing crumbling local streets and bridges, for which there's a multiyear backlog in many locales. In fact, a 1998 report shows that cities faced a shortfall of $2.42 billion in transportation infrastructure funding -- a shortfall that has grown significantly worse in the following years, according to the Association of Washington Cities. Working jointly with the AWC, the Big City Mayors have drafted a document outlining what they want from the coming session. It includes raising the current gas tax by another nickel, directly funding specific city projects, and providing a new range of local funding options for cities. "Cities are desperately searching to find ways to pay for street repairs, but we don't have any revenue, and we're trying to get state legislators to understand that," said Cary Bozeman, mayor of Bremerton. In the past, most cities have relied on lobbying support from the AWC. The creation of the Big City Mayors group, however, suggests the participants believe they can enhance their results by teaming up on the side. "We don't want to be out of sync with (AWC's) agenda, but there are certainly certain things peculiar to the major cities that we need to go down there and fight for," Bozeman said. "There's strength in numbers -- we're stronger going down there are as a group of 16," he said. "Uwe can speak in one voice, we have a chance of being heard." Combined, the 16 cities involved make up nearly a third of the state's total population, according to population figures from the state's Office of Financial Management. The Big City Mayors, no matter how big their cities, will find the funding environment in Olympia difficult, to say the least: Washington faces a projected budget shortfall of $1.6 billion over the next two years. Gov. Gary Locke is expected to release a proposed budget for the 2005-07 biennium on Dec. 16, although the new governor and Legislature will make substantial changes. http://seattle.bizj ournals. com/seattle/stories/2004/12/ 13/story l .html?t=printable 1/13/2005 Big -city mayors gang up - 2004-12-13 - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) Page 2 of 3 Meantime, the prospects for new gas taxes -- a key agenda item for the Big City Mayors -- seem dim. In campaigns this year, Gov. -elect Dino Rossi and several Democrat senators were attacked by opponents for supporting the Legislature's 2003 move to raise the gas tax by a nickel. That tax, which remains in place, funds only highways, not city streets. The Big City Mayors group, according to participants, is an outgrowth of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' discussions with various mayors soon after his election. It started with a group of six or seven cities and has since grown to include 16 of the largest cities in the state, from as far west as Bremerton to as far east as Spokane. The group has met in Seattle, Spokane, Olympia during the legislative session, and in Ocean Shores during an AWC conference this summer. In recent discussions with the informal group and with AWC, Nickels said, "Almost immediately, transportation jumped out as the core issue that we could tackle together." Seattle has gone from receiving $37 million to repair streets and bridges in 1995 to $12 million today, Nickels said. "We started to have conversations with other mayors and realized that Seattle is not alone," Nickels said. "The scale is different, but the problem and the challenge is exactly the same across cities." The group met with legislators in the 2003 and 2004 sessions. But in the upcoming legislative session, Nickels said, the group will be "testing the voice of mayors -- I think it can be an extraordinarily powerful voice." Ashley Probart, transportation project coordinator for AWC, said the Big City Mayors have taken a leadership role in this year's push for local streets and bridges. "Traditionally, transportation is one of the top two or three issues for AWC," he said. "This year, with the added weight and emphasis of the 16 cities, it's the No. 1 priority." (AWC's board will meet on Dec. 17 to determine its own top legislative priorities.) AWC has produced a brochure on the transportation issue showing that the cities' per capita gas tax distributions have dropped by 40 percent since 1991. Cities have grown rapidly -- by 43 percent since 1990 -- while gas tax distributions have remained fixed, meaning fewer dollars per capita. The nickel gas tax enacted in 2003 also provided no new distributions to cities, contrary to past legislative practice, according to the brochure. Bozeman said cities' finances have gotten dramatically worse since 1999, when voters approved Initiative 695, which set vehicle license tabs at a flat $30. That initiative was found unconstitutional, but the Legislature enacted the cut into law. In 2001, Initiative 747, which restricted cities to 1 percent annual property -tax increases, compounded the problem . AWC's brochure describes a solution that includes asking the state to raise the gas tax further. The cities are also asking for legislative authority for a menu of local transportation funding options. These include: • the re-enactment of a local vehicle license fee • raising the ceiling for a local option gas tax. Currently, if citizens vote to do so, a county can levy a local option gas tax at 10 percent of the state rate. The proposal asks for authority to increase that to 20 percent. • a local option fuel -efficiency tax, under which more -fuel-efficient vehicles would pay lower fees • a weight -based fee, because heavier cars have a more significant impact on roads • a constitutional fix that would allow cities to impose a street utility tax. http://seattle.bizj ournals. com/seattle/stories/2004/12/13/storyl .html?t=printable 1/13/2005 Big -city mayors gang up - 2004-12-13 - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) Page 3 of 3 Once the state authorizes such options, each city could choose the funding options that best meet its needs. Mark Brown, a governmental relations consultant for Vancouver, Wash., said the next step is for cities to meet with their delegations and make the case for transportation. For example, the city of Vancouver is scheduled to adopt its legislative agenda on Dec. 13, and is expected to meet with local legislators the next day. The city will present the proposal for transportation funding at that meeting, Brown said. If the Big City Mayors group is successful in its effort to win transportation funding, it may take up other legislative priorities, like economic development, in the future. Bozeman said he thinks the group is not quite organized and formalized enough yet, but has the potential to have real impact on the Legislature. Cities, he said, "haven't been very effective in the last number of years ... and we're kind of fed up with it." Contact: dgregg@bizjournals.com • 206-447-8505x114 © 2004 American City Business Journals Inc. Web reprint information All contents of this site 0 American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved. http://seattle.bizj ournals. com/seattle/stories/2004/12/13/story 1.html?t=printable 1/13/2005 ITEM TITLE: BUSINESS OF THE CITY COUNCIL YAKIMA, WASHINGTON AGENDA STATEMENT Item No. yl For Meeting of A -1-ac A Resolution of the City Council, seeking State Legislative Action to address funding for Municipal Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance SUBMITTED BY: Chris Waarvick, Director of Public Works CONTACT PERSON/TELEPHONE: Shelley Willson/575-6005 Joan Davenport/575-6005 SUMMARY EXPLANATION: The City of Yakima shares with other Washington cities the converging challenges of maintaining an aging transportation system of streets, alleys, sidewalks, street lights, paths and signalization systems, while also attempting to expand mobility resources for residents, business investment, economic vitality and future development. The attached resolution seeks State Legislative action to address annual maintenance funding shortfalls of $2.8 Million locally (Gap Analysis Report, May 3, 2004) and encourages other Washington municipalities to join in this endeavor to convey the severity and urgency of the funding shortfalls. Resolution X Ordinance _ Other (Specify) AWC Transportation Talking Points, Puget Sound Business Journal Article Contract Mail to (name and address): _need name and address Funding Source APPROVED FOR SUBMITTAL: 'c'.-::: -Z City Manager STAFF RECOMMENDATION: Staff respectfully requests City Council adopt the resolution seeking State Legislative Action to address funding for Municipal Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance. BOARD/COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION: Resolution adopted. RESOLUTION NO. R-2005-25 COUNCIL ACTION: