No one with a progressive mindset can reconcile that mindset with supporting a regressive tax like this. $60 is a huge chunk of change to people who are barely making ends meet (seriously: talk to your housekeeper, your gardener, whoever, and see what they think of the $60 tab fee), and the vague and repurposable traffic improvements promised in the proposition do not even come close to making up for this absurdly regressive tax.

Incidentally, Santiago, Portland, and San Francisco do not fund their integrated transit systems with regressive taxes regimes. The world's very best transit systems, from Tokyo to London to Berlin, actually use exceeding pro-gressive tax apparatuses to fund public transit.

By doubling the investment in sidewalks, incidentally, Prop 1 would expand the from 9 to 18 (wow, 18!) the number of new city blocks to get sidewalks. Wow!

Proposition 1 does not do anything to increase bus service; a promise of "up to" a 20% speed improvement means that the very best you might hope is waiting only (wow, only!) 48 minutes for some bus that you now wait 60 minutes for. Wow!

Vote no on Prop. 1.

It boils down to the fact that people don't trust the City government and don't believe that the money would be spent on transportation projects that benefit the entire population.

Transit would move 20% faster? Wait a minute. The city is simultaneously working to convince us that cars should move slower. Speed limits on roads would be reduced on the grounds of safety. How much more dangerous is a bus going 20% faster than now? Be careful, bicyclists. Splat.

"While the package is not perfect, we do not have the time to allow ourselves to let a quest for the perfect blind us to the good."

That's what was said in 2007 when McGinn and O'Brien were fighting an imbalanced roads and transit measure. They won, and successfully brought back a measure in 2008 that actually focused on what the region needed. Delaying a year will get us a measure that works, unlike this proposal.

"While Proposition 1 isn't perfect, arguing this measure is the "most regressive tool possible" is simply specious."

Maurice misses the argument. It isn't just that the car tab is regressive it is that Council chose to postpone doing anything about it. A rebate to low income folks handles the regressivity, but can only be done in a manner where voters get to vote on the method. Current plans to address the regressivity by taking millions from the General Fund are unacceptable WITHOUT a public vote.

"Moreover, the proposed improvements help support those who can't afford private transportation."

$18 million for street car studies and $6 million (in a recent draft SDOT spending plan) for advertising/promotional dollars helps low income people how?

"Nearly half of the package ($100 million) is dedicated to transit improvements and will fund speed and reliability enhancements on major transit corridors helping to move buses up to 20 percent faster."

False. 18% of the transit dollars in this measure -- more under more recent spending plans -- will do nothing to help transit because it is wasted on studies and advertising/promotions. After three weeks of information requests to the City, I can categorically say the 20% speed increase is a false and misleading number. Nobody's bus route will be 20% faster. Some sections of some routes will move, on average, 17% faster. And those many small improvements? They include taking out stops so our elderly and disabled population will have to walk farther to take a bus.

"Finally, Proposition 1 will create safer and more efficient neighborhood streets by dedicating $44 million to doubling investments in sidewalks and expanding the Neighborhood Street Fund by nearly 50 percent."

Also false. Bridging the Gap alone built 15 sidewalks in 2010. The original Prop 1 spending plan proposal would build 9 new block faces. That's not a "doubling". In one of the recent spending plans proposed by SDOT, we're now down to 4 block faces per year.

This proposal is so vague that SDOT has released three different spending plans between August and October. Each reduces money for pedestrians and transit infrastructure, redirecting it to advertising/promotional spending. Each satisfies how Council wrote Prop 1 (including Licata's recent tweak) but CLEARLY do not match up with how voters want their tax dollars spent.

Vote this down in 2011 and help up bring back a tighter, more focused measure in 2012.

David Miller
Sidewalks and Streets for Seattle Campaign

Sincere question - To all that seem to support the goals of this measure but think the funding mechanism is too regressive ...

How would you pay for it, then?

@Joolian:

A progressive tax would take the value of a car into account, or the taxpayer's income, so that low-income people pay the same percentage of their income as do high-income people. This is how the best transit systems in the world are funded, not with flat taxes.

A flat fee like the $60 tab proposal means that someone who earns $30,000 is taxed 0.20% of their income, whereas someone who earns $150,000 is taxed only 0.04%. Proportionally, that means the person earning $30,000 is getting FIVE times the tax hit than the person earning $150,000. The larger earner would need to pay $300 per year to suffer the same tax hit as the lower earner.

I thought maintaining the infrastructure was a primary duty of the local government. Unfortunately, during good times, transportation funding is diverted to other programs. Now, in difficult times, we can't fund all these programs. We really do not learn from the past. This is a repeating story of profligacy in the good times and new taxes when revenues decline and is classically Seattle.

smacgry: "No one with a progressive mindset can reconcile that mindset with supporting a regressive tax like this. ... Santiago, Portland, and San Francisco do not fund their integrated transit systems with regressive taxes regimes."

Yes, because those cities didn't have the combination of Tim Eyman, an ignorant tax averse electorate, and a spineless governor (Locke) to eliminate the more progressive form of vehicle licensing (value-based tax). The anti voices have yet to explain how we're going to replace the lost MVET revenue stream with something at least as progressive. I do agree with David Miller that using the general fund to "un-regressive" the tab fee is not helpful. The source of that fund is mostly property, B&O;, and sales taxes (http://www.seattle.gov/council/budget/graphs.htm). Real progressive. Not.

Except for the Flying Nun (no disrespect to Sally Field intended), everyone uses a street or sidewalk via one mode of transportation or another. Like the tabacco tax works with cigarettes, the more success at moving people out of cars, the smaller the base of income will be. Funding should be based on the greatest vehicle wheels a citizen over 17 owns...0 on up. If you have a car and a bike, it's 4; a bike only it's 2; etc. If you live in the city and have neither, it's 0, but you contribute also. Once bicycles are required to register, there should be a way to implement this approach. And, yes, you could use vehicle value as a way to make it less regressive. Haven't figured out how to sort the "0"s, however.

As part of the ignorant tax averse electorate, I want note that over many decades I have voted for more money for schools, parks, transportation, all sorts of projects. However, we seem to be getting less and less for our dollar. At times like these, it is worthwhile to consider how we got here. While you folks work on how to develop a more progressive new tax, the rest of us should try to find someone who can govern.

Seconding louploup, the voters implimented a flat tax on tabs and the leg left the city and county with few options to raise additional funding for transportation needs. We'll soon discover that underfunding mass transit, eliminating entire routes, is more regressive than adding half a single bus fare for each week of driving while gas prices jump up with popular votes to stop them.
Horsey's archives at the P.I. seem to have been drastically reduced, he had a fine one showing a driver meekly accepting price increases in crude and gas, but going ballistic over a small increase in the gas tax which hasn't been adjusted for inflation.

@DavidSmith- you're in error. Everyone in the city pays for streets through their property tax or through rent for their landlord's property tax. It's drivers like you that are being subsidized for free street parking, wear and tear on streets, and traffic enforcement by those of us not using cars. Transit takes a smaller per capita share than for individual drivers. If your mother raised you with manners, you might yet say thank you.

Drat, life without editors. "while gas prices jump up with popular votes to stop them" ought to read
while gas prices jump up withOUT popular votes to stop them. And 'lege' for 'leg'. I regret my errors in haste.

There are so many reasons that I oppose this Proposition it is hard to know where to start. While anyone who drives around Seattle will agree, our streets are a mess. But this is not the solution we need.

1. Why are we in this mess? This author says the reason is various unnamed initiatives. Can you be specific? I assume it is the rollback of car tabs that was passed overwhelming some years back. But the bigger picture is that revenues from the gas tax have been declining over the years due to more efficient cars. We are getting less revenue to fix our streets per mile driven than in the past. We do need more revenue for our streets, but a car tab is bad solution ever, and really bad given the economy and the similar measure put on the ballot by King County.

2. The money will be spent on so many things that none of them will really benefit. In typical political fashion, the proposition includes a little bit for everybody in hopes to gain enough votes. Will I for one do not vote for these smorgasbord type funding packages. Break it up so we can vote on what we want to support.

3. If our Mayor is in favor of this proposition, then I am against it. Now I know this is not a particularly well reasoned approach to voting, but currently Mayor McGinn is now in 2nd place behind Tim Eyman as an automatic reason to be opposed to any ballot measure.

4. This is another example of Seattle trying to go it alone with transportation solutions. This is a regional problem that needs regional solutions. I understand that there are some local improvements that will help, but this is putting a band aid on a bleeding artery (arterial). Take the transit portion out of this proposition and get together with the rest of Puget Sound and fix the real problem.

Let us send our Seattle politicians a message and vote this proposition down.

The best way to help transit is to improve roads for buses, cars and bikes to share.We oldsters who grew up with streetcars were happy to say good riddance to an uncool 19th century anachronism, in favor or more flexible, much faster and less traffic-interfering buses and trackless trolleys. Even one penny for streetcars would get my no vote. PLus as many others note, the tax mechanism is unnecearily regressive.

So, as I suspected, there is no current "progressive" way to pay for this, given our Eyman-initiative-hamstrung funding process. Right?

This whole discussion would be moot if the City Council hadn't squandered $75+ million in parking taxes and other Bridging the Gap funds on the Paul Allen's Mercer Street scheme.

Mercer Street has been a sink hole for money and mayors since I-5 was built. Paul Allen at least is building something around the new street, those buildings will have a higher value, increasing property taxes for South Lake Union and eventually the city will get it's tax money back.

You're flat wrong - the City had put nary a dime into Mercer Street for close to 50 years, and it sold the old Bay Freeway properties to Paul Allen with the explicit requirement that public benefits were to be provided and the properties were to be developed within a fixed time frame (oh yeah, and that the Mercer/Valley corridor was to remain essentially as-is with a minor reconfiguration of the Mercer/Valley/Fairview intersection that was to cost about $20 million or so).

Instead, the money from the property sales that was to fund that reconfiguration was instead put into propping up the Alaskan Way Viaduct Tunnel EIS, and Paul Allen's new Mercer scheme has hoovered up upwards of $200 million tax dollars ($75 million of which came from BTG and parking taxes, and the rest of which could have gone to the South Park Bridge, Lander Street Overpass, Magnolia Bridge, and/or any number of projects).

And no, the new tax revenue will never pay those funds back - particularly since Mr. Allen and Hallivulcan have another $500 million or so in pending demands.

Money is fungible, and every time Seattle voters allow themselves to be blackmailed by the City government into raising their taxes to pay for essential services/maintenance/infrastructure the City has then turned around and used every non-voted dollar available to it for projects it knows damn well would never survive a public vote.

Not just No on Prop 1 - HELL NO.

@joolian -- they could have run a property tax increase, like Bridging The Gap. Not the fairest solution, but better than the $60 Car Tabs "flat tax". After a NO vote this will be back as an option.

I see that voters have already dodged one bullet: " an admired challenger to Godden, deputy prosecutor Maurice Classen, running on a platform of modernizing city hall and shaping a business culture to the current economy, couldn't muster business support," Brewster 11/3; now on to the next.