SANDAG Poised to Ask Voters For Public Projects Sales Tax

Regional planners are wrestling with how to sell voters on a sales tax measure to improve the quality of life across the county.

They're looking to spend billions of dollars on all kinds of projects, about half of the funding targeted toward transportation.

The proposed sales tax hike would be a half-cent on the dollar, to raise $18 billion over four decades -- just a small piece of the $200 billion spending puzzle the region hopes to solve with money also coming from federal, state and local taxes.

It won't be easy to get a required two-thirds of the voters in the November election on board with a sales tax hike.

So directors of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) know they've got to steer a fairly mainstream course among choices on a long wish list of public improvement needs that go far beyond transportation.

"Quality of life is everything,” Little Italy resident Anne MacMillan Eichman told SANDAG directors at a downtown hearing on Friday. β€œYou can't have safe, walkable, bikeable streets if you don't have sound infrastructure. Widening highways does not a transit system create."

But 41% of SANDAG's survey respondents prioritized road and highway investments versus 33% who preferred a public transit emphasis, with the rest favoring technology improvements, or undecided.

Says Bankers Hill resident Cynthia Turner, who backs more spending on transit: β€œIt’s for our kids, for the disabled, for our military that don't have cars and are stationed here, our tourists, who don't want to rent cars."

And why should SANDAG spend more on roads and highways?

"Because everybody's comfortable in their car," El Cajon resident Kim Springs told NBC 7 in a Friday interview at a downtown trolley stop. β€œThey don't want to get on the trolley and sit next to somebody. The time it takes to get where you're going, you can get there quicker in a car."

For SANDAG directors, prioritizing 'trolleys versus cars' quickly gets them to a variety of neighborhood, environment and climate change issues – all within the framework of alternatives that favor more local control over the spending, versus regionwide projects.

"It's like a family right before Christmas, where Johnny wants a bicycle and Susie wants a pony and the Mrs. wants something else,” says Poway Mayor Steve Vaus. β€œ We have to be the wise parents here of this big family in San Diego County and figure out those needs, and how to come closest to fulfilling the ones that are important."

If all that isn't enough of a challenge, that half-cent sales tax figures to be on the November ballot with other big measures.

Especially ones affecting San Diego voters, such as an infrastructure spending plan and possible stadium and hotel room-tax hike initiatives.

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