Quote:
Originally Posted by Ich
https://www.cpr.org/news/story/rtd-e...racks-projects
Pretty cool article about RTD and finishing the light rail. If I understood it correctly, if we were to approve a .1% sale and use tax hike we could have it all finished by 2040 which I would totally support. Also got me thinking that if Denver were to pass a 1% sales tax or an increase in the income tax couldn’t that fund a wide scale street car system?
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Why in God's name would we piss money away on a goddamn streetcar system with a freaking ~10% increase to our sales tax rate that would make Denver the most expensive city in the metro area to sell consumable goods?
Denver currently has a sales tax rate of 4.31% after we voted for all sorts of goodies last year and Denver pulls in about $700M from sales and use taxes. Increasing it by 1% would put the overall sales tax burden in Denver at 9.31%- the most expensive in the metro area. Assuming that there is no price sensitivity by Denver peeps, and that they don't decide to hop on over to Aurora to make purchases at cheaper rates, such a sales tax would generate about $190M in new revenue. This new revenue could support about $2B in bonding, with $90M leftover for O&M of a new system. $2B could build maybe three corridors in a city with 20 transit corridors in desperate need of improvement.
I'd put that $2B towards a shit-ton of upgrades to our bus system rather than three vanity projects. Really, I wouldn't put a 1% tax increase on the ballot, but would look at a rideshare usage tax, kill the scholarship and food desert tax, a .25% sales tax for transit, and a property tax increase with the cumulative amount approaching $150M to 175M and seeking form grants elsewhere to bridge the capital gap.