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Transit and trails (1A): Spin and reality

Contributed by: Eva Kosinski on 10/20/2006

At a brown bag lunch this week, I was given the task (in a room full of folks with 1A signs) of producing "cons" for the 1A ballot initiative.

No small task, since the ballot issue has two seemingly related items, both of which have complicated elements that cannot reasonably explained in 2.5 minutes unless you are an auctioneer, or a big fan of sound bites, which I am not.

There are a lot of "cons" to my mind. Let me explain why.

First, I am not an expert in transportation; I have looked at the flow chart of relationships between the something like 12 different organizations that interact to get the transportation stuff done, an alphabet soup that has elements at the Federal level, the state level, and the county level, plus a number of "helper" organizations like the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG), the Boulder County Consortium of Cities Regional Transit Committee (CC/RTC) and, of course, the Regional Transportation District (RTD).

The CC/RTC has put together a Transit Enhancement Plan, which is the basis for this ballot issue. Of course, there is nothing in the language of the ballot issue itself to tell you that. In fact, none of the acronyms appear (and for that I guess we can be grateful).

At the lunch mentioned above, we were all reassured that this transit part of the ballot issue has been in process for quite a long time. Folks have been invited to meetings from Jan 06 - April 06 and the TEP itself has been in process since 2003. We were also assured that the ballot initiative funds were not going directly to RTD. Technically, yes, but with spin. Let's see some of what's really going on.

If you take the time to find the TEP on the net:
(http://www.transitandtrails.org/downloads/transit.pdf) you will find that there are lots of familiar RTD transportation mentioned. The DASH which runs through Louisville, for example, as well as a number of "fixed routes" that run through Boulder County.

There are expansions for elderly and disabled riders and expanded services between communities. All very logical. If you look closely, you will find that it also mentions, "new transit facilities and facility improvements, marketing efforts and facility maintenance." Do we really have the checks and balances in place to be sure we are getting what we think we are voting for?

If you go looking for some of the relationships between the various acronym commmittees , etc. you find something interesting that goes back to 2003. The money trail for RTD is pretty much from the federal and state levels. DRCOG's Web site says that "DRCOG is the Metropolitan Planning Organization and is responsible for the lead role in transportation planning in the Denver region."

The money comes from fed and state to be used for plans, some very elaborate, by DRCOG (MetroVision2020 for one), with priorities determined by regional policies, set in place by DRCOG study groups, and with approval from DRCOG. Once approved, they become transportation improvement plans.

TIP Plans in the archives go all the way in the past from 2003 to the 2010 plans. Boulder County has had only the flimsiest representation in the TIPs that have been approved since 2002. Some have been languishing since the late 90s with no action taken by RTD, even some with safety concerns.

Boulder County, in spite of assurances to the contrary, seems not to be getting their "fair share" of the RTD revenues. That would account for the gathering of Boulder and Broomfield Counties to make their own transit enhancement plan, which we will now (in all likelihood) vote to pay for.

One can argue that there are more critical infrastructure issues in Denver and they should get all the tax monies that we already give to RTD, but the answer may be more in the structure.

While you would expect that Boulder County, which has a County Commissioner who is not only on the Board of Directors of DRCOG, but who is an officer of DRCOG (immediate past chair), would have some influence in whether Boulder County gets those RTD funds or not -- DRCOG, after all, makes the plans and the priorities, in theory.

The question is, does this position constitute a conceptual conflict of interest (only financial conflicts are considered unethical, so ethics is not the issue) which makes it difficult to see the needs of Boulder County first, or, given that DRCOG has to work closely with RTD, difficult to fight hard for Boulder County's interests over those of other Cities in the region, as we would expect our Commissioners to do. Regionalizing the decision process may be hurting Boulder County.

The defensiveness is there. When I suggested that RTD would be getting funds from this ballot issue, I was immediately informed that the ballot issue funds were going to the County, and the County would have control.

Later, I discovered that most, if not all, of the "fixed route" enhancements mean we will be contracting with RTD to provide the same services we thought we were already paying for. Saying RTD was not getting the tax income was not a fib...just a spin.

It's up to you to decide if you want to pay more to RTD, or if you want to find out why our interests have not brought forward Boulder County RTD projects with the funds we already pay.

This ballot issue is also deceptive. From the wording, you would assume that the monies would split evenly, but if you check into it, 80 percentof the funds gathered from this ballot issue will go to transit. Only 20 percentwill go to trails.

It's my take (and you may have your own) that putting trails on an apparently equal footing will grab the good vibes that Boulder County (where many folks believe that the business of government is recreation) has about trails and open space, and get votes from the folks that don't do their homework.

Boulder County has a dismal record of maintenance of its open space. Hopefully, they will do better with trails. In a ten year period, I was twice privileged to visit the old Harney Lastoka Farm, (across S. Boulder Rd. from King Sooopers), and was furious to find the degree of massive neglect it has suffered from being declared "open space."

Buildings had started to fall down. It's not that the neglect was intentional -- none of the open space issues on the ballot had talked about anything but acquisition. There was no money for maintenance. Here again, maintenance (which at least, this time is included in the ballot language) takes a second seat to acquisition.

I believe Boulder County voters (much as I personally don't believe that trails are a function of government; I'd much rather see non-profits take care of them, since I think they would do a better job) will vote for any kind of trail ballot issue. So do the County Commissioners.

I think you'll be paying twice for RTD services they have not deigned to provide with the monies we give them. If you think trails are that important, go for it. We'll see if the "contract" approach to RTD gets us any better services. We'll be paying through the nose for it.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Eva Kosinski

Louisville , CO

Eva Kosinski has posted 114 stories and 13 comments since joining on 12/18/2005. Eva Kosinski 's average story rating is 4.92.
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