TRANSPORTATION TAX PLAN REQUIRES INPUT AND DETAILS

At the urging of Cape Girardeau Mayor Al Spradling III, voters will have an opportunity to decide on a seven-year, half-cent transportation sales tax to pay for city street projects. The city council voted 5-2 Monday to put the tax on the June 6 ballot. The tax would generate an estimated $24.3 million over seven years.

Two previous transportation issues failed at the polls. Maybe the third time will be a charm. The concept of using sales taxes to generate money for capital improvements is a good one, particularly in a city like Cape Girardeau, which is the region's retail hub. A significant percentage of motorists on city streets are non-residents. These visitors are able to use city facilities paid for by local taxpayers. Why not tax their purchases to help finance new projects, many of which are the needed directly as a result of the city's important role in regional commerce?

But Cape taxpayers also would have to pay the tax, and it is important that city leaders give them a clear picture of what it is they will be voting on. That hasn't happened yet. Voters need to know what projects the sales tax would finance.

Mayor Spradling has shown his willingness to fashion a measure that the voters can support. The mayor initially called for a 10-year, half-cent sales tax, but he agreed to the seven-year plan, which might be more acceptable to voters.

Still, the only hard information presented regarding the tax is that the seven-year sales tax would generate more than $24 million, based on projected growth in the city's economy. If Spradling and other council members want to garner support for a transportation tax, they will need to come up with specific, unfunded street improvement projects that the money would be used for.

The council is in the process of adopting its five-year capital improvements plan, which includes about $8 million in street and bridge projects. An addendum to the plan the past several years has been the city's unfunded needs list, a wish list of street projects deemed impractical because of their cost.

Why not study these unfunded projects, determine their estimated cost, and promise to earmark transportation tax revenue for them? Some council members have argued for improvements to existing streets before proceeding with projects already funded in the capital improvements plan. This would be a step backward, but there is no good reason why such street improvements couldn't also be identified as transportation tax projects.

The lack of details about which projects would be funded by the proposed sales tax doesn't bode well for the issue when it reaches the polls in June. And a third failure to win voter approval would do little to solve Cape Girardeau's street problems, which are evident.

The mayor has given a nod to the Chamber of Commerce's surface transportation committee as a potential source of valuable information of what street projects are needed most and how much they might cost.

But the voters -- already smarting from recent increases in city water, sewer and trash fees -- will expect to be convinced that the transportation sales tax is both a sound idea and will produce street improvements generally viewed as needed.

Another issue for voters will be whether or not the proposed sales tax is the best -- or only -- way to finance the needed improvements. Mayor Spradling wisely suggests that revenue from the proposed riverboat casino in Cape Girardeau shouldn't be counted on for important capital improvements just yet. If the gambling casino becomes a reality and generates revenue for the city, the council would have the option at that time of rescinding the transportation sales tax, if that course seemed prudent at the time.

Information, and lots of it, is what is needed now for Cape Girardeau voters to get behind the sales-tax idea. City planners, public works officials, chamber representatives and citizens, as well as council members need a plan for collecting and organizing the facts and figures on the city's street needs and costs.

And if there are good reasons for not supporting a sales tax for street improvements, or if there are better options available, everyone needs to hear that too.

Until some workable and detailed plan is developed for funding street improvements, the city will be left only with unfunded infrastructure needs and an ambiguous tax proposal that voters already have rejected twice.