Phoenix’s newly approved Proposition 104 will expand every area of city transportation – if it doesn’t hit a road block first.
On January 1, Phoenix residents will start paying an 8.6 percent sales tax – a .3 percent increase. If all goes according to plan, residents will see more bike lanes and more Valley Metro buses and light rail routes – all part of a $31.5 billion public transit plan funded by the tax, which expires in 35 years.
Phoenix voters passed the Proposition 104 transit tax hike last August, but it may be a while before the physical work begins. The city council’s first step was to design a Citizens Oversight Commission – formed in part to ensure the transportation plan is rolled out in accordance with the proposition, and that taxes for transportation aren’t used for other purposes. But if this grand transit plan falters, it wouldn’t be the first for Phoenix.
As this issue went to press, the council was reviewing applications for the 15-person commission, members of which will serve two- or three-year terms. City Councilwoman Kate Gallego expected the council to name commissioners by the beginning of December. The volunteer commission will have a somewhat murky authority over spending under the proposition. According to the ballot language, the committee will “review all expenditures.” Gallego says they’ll also “make sure we stay on… the plan that the voters approved.” (See sidebar.)
The commission doesn’t have spending power, but will make recommendations to the council. That means the plans laid out by the proposition aren’t guaranteed to play out as written – though if they don’t, the commission will be there to sound the alarm.
That would be a familiar scenario to Phoenix residents, who at the turn of the new millennium passed Transit 2000, a similar tax hike that funded a proposal to, among other things, extend the light rail along State Route 51 all the way to Union Hills. This never happened. (A Maricopa County proposition passed in 2004 promised the same thing, to no fruition.) Transit 2000 also promised voters an increase in bus service to all of the city’s major streets, but today’s reality doesn’t match that map. Many promises of the 2000 initiative were fulfilled initially, but were then scaled back in 2008 after the great recession began – though the tax increase stayed in place.
Maria Hyatt, director of public transit for the city, hopes that won’t happen with Prop 104. “We included project reserves and contingency on every single element. These are things that weren’t done in our existing program, with Transit 2000.”
Both she and Gallego acknowledged that financial crashes or technological advancements could change the ultimate outcome of the proposition, which necessitates flexibility given its long-view. “What we didn’t want to do is get so tied into something that there was never a change,” Hyatt says. “We think it’s a very solid plan, but only time will tell.”
As written, 20 percent of the sales tax income from the proposition will support the city’s plan to triple the amount of light rail track in Phoenix by 2050. Opponents cried foul at all that funding, pointing out that very few residents currently ride the light rail.
Hyatt says they’ve seen it before: If the city builds it, riders will come – but the city will have to play the long game (and cross its fingers for federal funding). “Light rail takes a whole long time to get done,” Hyatt says. The current project, frustrating commuters along 19th Avenue near Dunlap Avenue and Camelback Road, is expected to be completed within a few months. It was put on hold for years during the economic collapse, according to Hyatt.
The next light rail focus will be a new corridor along the I-10 to 49th Avenue. Hyatt says that should be completed by 2023, and that expansion of the city’s Dial-a-Ride service will occur within “hopefully – knock on wood – a year.”
Another immediate outcome isn’t as clearly connected to transportation: the hiring of more Phoenix police officers. “Right now the [city’s] general fund helps support transportation,” Gallego explains. “With the passage of Proposition 104, we can move public transit to be just supported by the transportation fund, so that… frees up money in the general fund, and the city council decided that the most urgent need was hiring more police officers.”
Not everyone agrees. Puente Arizona, a Hispanic civil rights group, showed up to one city council meeting in late October to voice their disapproval. Francisca Porchas, organizing director of Puente, said they are upset the council seems to be using proposition money on something other than transportation as promised. But most, she said, are upset the city is hiring more officers before first reforming the “culture of abuse and violence and rape that currently exists within the Phoenix police department.”
Gallego accused Puente of having a “clear agenda,” and says they didn’t make too much of a stir at the October meeting. “There’s nothing in Prop 104 that went to police,” she says. “City budgets are complicated.”
