Regional Sales Tax is Wrong Solution

Our Road Congestion Problem

Road traffic congestion needs to be reduced in Atlanta Metro. Georgia politicians are proposing solutions that destroy city and county sovereignty and will result in spending billions of tax dollars on the wrong projects and will cause the need to spend billions more by overfunding a failed public transit system and not solving our road congestion problems

Atlanta’s Public Transit Problem

Coincidentally, MARTA, Atlanta’s public bus and train system is expected to lose its “sugar daddy” next year. The Federal government is broke and probably won’t be able to provide any MARTA bail-out money in 2013. MARTA spends $750 million a year, earns $120 million in revenue and wants more money to cover a $630 million shortfall. Utilization has always been low.

Only 5% of the populations uses MARTA. MARTA has typically been subsidized by county sales tax and federal money for the past 30 years by about $500 million a year. Had we left transit in the hands of the private sector, we wouldn’t have spent $15 billion over the past 30 years keeping MARTA afloat. That $15 billion could have been spent on sewer replacement and road expansion and maintenance.

Wrong Assumptions

Transit only works in cities with high population densities like New York. Atlanta is a very low population density area, It is a suburban model that would work well, except for decades of incompetence and refusal to upgrade our roads to accommodate our growth.

Dishonesty

Claiming that improving our future depends on us passing this flawed plan is laughable. The only groups who are scheming to trick us into voting for this boondoggle are those who want to make money from this, environmental crazies and large companies who don’t want to make waves opposing the Obama administration.

Wrong Projects

The ARC (Atlanta Regional Commission) Final list to be voted on July 31, 2012 spends 53% of the tax revenues expected on public transit. We don’t have a public transit congestion problem; we have a road congestion problem.

Projects Overpriced

The projected costs for the GDOT road projects for Dunwoody appear to be about 20 times higher than cities and counties currently pay for road milling and resurfacing.

The price tag for a re-do of 3.5 miles of Mt Vernon Road in Dunwoody is $12 million. That’s $3.4 million per mile. Current road milling and resurfacing costs are about $200,000 per mile. For 3.5 miles the cost should be $700,000, not $12 million. The GDOT cost is 17 times higher.

The price tag for a re-do of the half mile long Dunwoody Village Parkway is $2.4 million. That’s $4.8 million per mile. For a half mile the cost should be $100,000, not $2.4 million Again using $200,000 per mile costs on this low priority re-do, GDOT cost is 24 times higher than it should be.

In each case, GDOT charges about $4 million per mile on a job that should cost $200 thousand per mile. GDOT charges 20 times more.

In fairness, some of this cost is due to the central planning requirements that these roads should have spandex biker lanes and 5 to 6 foot wide sidewalks. This is part of Obama’s “spend us into oblivion” plan. All this overspending will result in very high inflation very soon.

Wrong Solutions

Georgia politicians have devised a scheme to bail out MARTA and claim that it will solve our road congestion problems by imposing an unconstitutional regional governance on cities and counties.

Wrong Structure

Prior to the passage of the Transportation Investment Act of 2010, cities and counties were in charge of their own roads. Our State politicians violated the “home rule” provisions of the Georgia Constitution and created regional committees to usurp city and county sovereignty. These committees are appointed, unelected and unaccountable. Soviet style regional governance Apparatchik. The Regional Transportation Committees will impose central planning of all transportation. The Regional “Development” Committees will impose central planning of everything else.

Sabotage & Treason

Hapless County Commissioners have rolled this Trojan horse into their counties. In fairness, these Georgia politicians have been bribed and extorted by the Obama Administration to implement these unconstitutional changes in order to get the last of the federal bailout money. Obama is implementing U.N. Agenda 21 and unelected regional governance is part of that plan to undermine our elective government model in the U.S. It’s happening everywhere except for the few states who are resisting it.

Loose Controls

GDOT will receive 85%, $6.14 billion of the total $7.2 billion expected to be collected. This will become a slush fund for more goofy plans. Remember, these are the guys who thought we needed stop lights at highway entry ramps and they will call the shots. At the end of 10 years, they will have identified the need for $30 billion more in sales taxes for “transportation. This will be their excuse for having half finished multi million dollar projects.

Overreach by Busybodies

Our Georgia politicians have not only transferred responsibility for our roads to a Commissar. They have also assumed total responsibility for your TRANSPORTATION. That includes making your transportation mode decisions for you.

Before 2010, your local politicians were just responsible for road maintenance and you had the choice to use a car or call a cab or a friend. You could also in most places, use a bike or walk. If there was transit available, you could use a bus or a train. These worked fine in the past, operated by private companies.

Now your tax money is going to fund an army of unnecessary government busybodies who want to “educate” you. The State of Georgia assuming responsibility for “transportation” is an expensive “Nanny State” move.

Central Planning Won’t Work

Central planning didn’t work for the Soviet Union and it doesn’t work for traffic congestion relief. The regional approach should be scrapped. We should vote down this unfair money grab and repeal TIA (Transportation Investment Act of 2010) We should close GDOT and disband the Regional Commissars.

We should return to city and county responsibility for road maintenance and expansion. They should raise their own tax money and keep it for their own cities and counties. They can bid this work and get better designs and better prices.

Vote No on July 31, 2012. This tax would sap your county’s ability to solve your road problems now and in the future.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader