Now here’s an easy decision to make on this year’s election ballot. With a “yes” vote on Aurora Question 2B, voters can approve a long list of important road, bike and pedestrian transportation projects across the city, and not raise taxes.
Count us in.
The measure makes use of taxes Aurora residents are already paying; should voters approve 2B, property taxes won’t go up.
In exchange for that mill-levy extension, the city will be able to finance about $74 million in badly needed transportation improvements.
It’s a good deal.
Why roads? Because they keep the city moving in more ways than one. To keep Aurora economically growing, the city must maintain the roads we’ve got, and improve others to allow for all kinds of expansion and addition.
The best example given by proponents is the case of Buckley Air Force Base. About $27 million of the 2B money would go toward extending and improving roads into the base. This massive complex provides thousands of jobs in the area, and pumps about $1 billion a year into the local economy. Aurora knows only too well how very real base closures are, having lost Lowry Air Force Base and Fitzimons Army post in the last couple of decades. As the Pentagon begins yet another round of reducing the national military complex, Aurora must do all it can to ensure Buckley is given the priority status it deserves.
Everyone agrees that attention to the base’s mission and expansion make big differences when the Pentagon determines what is and isn’t important to keep. By ensuring buffer zones around the base and solid transportation to and from the base, Aurora sends a strong message to Washington about how important Buckley is to all of us.
It’s a similar story with the Anschutz Medical Campus and other projects on the massive Fitzsimons campus. Badly needed transportation improvements into the campus send a strong signal to prospective businesses that the city is willing to ensure employees and public transportion can safely and efficiently keep big and small businesses going. As Aurora continues to court national and international projects that could mean thousands of top jobs, commitments to infrastructure and education will help give Aurora an edge it needs.
Beyond that, the list of projects provides much-needed work across the entire city. Better, safer bike lanes and pedestrian changes will benefit all residents.
City officials say they have addressed concerns about prioritization and possible changes. They say that while the entire city council has agreed on the list so far, lawmakers have flexibility should matching money for a project evaporate, or should a new priority appear. Some of the money is set aside for parking and train-station improvements as the I-225 FasTracks light-rail line is built out. Those stations and parking facilities are vital to a working mass-transit system in the city, access to the Anschutz Campus, and critical economic development projects surrounding the stations. Should an unexpected, crucial need occur there, proponents of this measure say the city would have the flexibility it needs to redirect resources if it had to.
That’s important. While it’s important to ensure all of these projects are completed, it would be tragic to hamstring Aurora’s light-rail projects forever in exchange for median improvements someplace else.
With Question 2B, the city has created a thoughtful, pragmatic way to get much-needed infrastructure projects completed without raising taxes. Every resident has every reason to vote “yes.”
Continuing its unbroken string of cheer-leading for the latest Aurora tax increase…and that’s what it is, a tax increase, the Sentinel editorial folks are championing the latest taxing boondoggle coming from city council.
City council has referred a $74 million (Up to $135 million total with interest) bond issue on the ballot, to fund a plethora of pet transportation projects.
Two bond issues from 1998 & 2000 which purchased the Alameda/I-225 interchange, public safety, parks and open space and library projects are due to be paid off by December 2015.
The majority on Aurora City Council, which dislikes the idea of paying off the bonds and lowering the city component of property taxes 19%, wants taxpayers to keep paying for another 20 years. Yes, they have created this year’s forever tax.
The 2012 Aurora tax hike amounts to Extend – Pretend – Spend. Council would extend the property tax, pretend it is not a tax increase and spend the money.
One of the more egregious of the proposed new projects is an approximate 50% contribution of $6,000,000 for a new 900 space parking garage for the RTD facility at Iliff and I-225. Amazing. Residents already pay a 1% RTD sales tax. Why would voters want to double tax themselves, by paying to fund a new structure that RTD ought to build? Just the Aurora contribution per parking space would be $6700. They will have Cadillac accommodations for the Cadillac’s that will park there. This whole effort will subsidize future developers parking for Transit Oriented Development (TOD).
Many of the potpourri of transportation projects that the city wants to fund with this tax increase, reflects the fact that growth occurring in Aurora has not paid for itself. The city is trying to place the burden of these expanded transportation projects on existing residents.
Aurora voters, who have told council year after year that they will not tolerate new taxes, will once again inform their elected public servants to temper their illusions of grandeur, live with the current budget and will vote NO on 2B.
This are the same roads outside of Fitz that the City updated with grass and trees, then went back and took out the grass, then went back a third time and took out the trees. If this City would get their heads on straight in the first place and fix the road correctly in the first place it would not be necessary to go back and dig up the same roads 2 and 3 times. If you don’t believe this, then just take one trip down I225 any morning or afternoon. Why has it taken so many years to widen this short piece of roadway. It is because they do a small section, tear it up to do the next section and then tear it up again to redo the whole thing. Our great great grandchildren with still be involved in the remolding of this one road. I am sure that it will still be under construction long after we are driving flying cars and the road will only be used as a landing strip.
I’ll vote for 2B as soon as I see it in writing that roads near and parallel to E470 will be improved before drilling 6th Ave through to Picadilly RD and beyond. I believe this initiative has more to do with helping developers like Horizon East than anything else. Go ahead and make Tower Rd two lanes each way every foot from Colfax to 45th Ave before you develop more roads to and from E470 please.
A new message from the Mayor on Question 2B:
https://tinyurl.com/d94wnlf