AURORA | It appears roadways across Colorado will continue to fall into disrepair, as voters across the state Tuesday soundly rejected a pair of ballot measures intended to fix the states dilapidated arterials.
With about 75 percent of counties reporting results, the state electorate rejected both Propositions 109 and 110 by a vote of about 60 percent to 40 percent, according to the Secretary of State.
Proposition 110 — also known as “Let’s Go Colorado” — would have netted as much as $6 billion over the course of 20 years by way of a 0.62 percent increase to state sales tax. The measure would have generated as much as $767 million in its first year, with the remainder coming in the form of state bonds purchased and paid back over the course of two decades, at which point the tax increase will sunset. The state wouldn’t have been able to pay more than $9.4 billion in bond repayment, according to the ballot language.
Aurora was poised to receive about $12.2 million in transportation funding in the first year of the Proposition 110 tax, and nearly $350 million in transportation dollars over the fee’s 20-year lifespan, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Potential projects would have included expanding East Sixth Avenue near Airport Boulevard, a retooling of the I-225 and Yosemite Street cluster, and re-examining the long-proposed bus rapid transit line along East Colfax Avenue between I-225 and I-25 in Denver. Those three Aurora-specific projects would have boasted a total price tag of about $290 million, according to CDOT.
Proposition 109 — also known as “Fix Our Damn Roads” — asked voters to approve $3.5 billion in bonds to improve state highways. The measure did not seek to increase Colorado taxes, but instead would have allowed the state to increase its debt and borrow the aforementioned amount through bonds, which would be paid back over the course of 20 years. The measure was petitioned onto the ballot by the Independence Institute, a Denver-based Libertarian think tank.