The Whatcom Transportation Authority board voted 6-2 at a public hearing Thursday to include a sales tax increase on the April 2010 election ballot.

The WTA executive board proposed the sales tax increase of two-tenths of one percent as a way to avoid a 14 percent service cut to the transit system.

WTA General Manager Richard Walsh said if voters approve the tax increase, it will be implemented in October 2010 and there will be no service reductions.
If voters do not approve, service cuts will begin next September, Walsh said.

WTA Vice Chair Mel Hansen and board member Jack Louws opposed the motion to send the request to voters. Louws said the WTA had already overextended its financial capabilities to the community by raising the sales tax three-tenths of one percent in 2003.

More than 25 Whatcom County residents who spoke at the hearing including Western students, WTA employees and other members of the community said service cuts would have a great impact on their abilities to get to work, school, the hospital and church.

Whatcom County resident Bern Haggerty, 44, said paying the higher sales tax would benefit the community more than cutting public transportation services.

“Bus services are a basic need for hundreds of people in Whatcom County,” Haggerty said. “As a taxpayer I’m willing to pay higher taxes for a good transportation system, and I think most taxpayers would agree.”

Hansen said he did not think many people would support the sales tax increase.

“In this economy, knowing that there are lots of people without jobs, a tax increase is probably going to be difficult to sell,” Hansen said.
But Mark Lowry, WTA bus driver and President of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 843, said if cuts are made, more than two dozen WTA employees, including drivers, dispatchers, mechanics and maintenance workers, will be out of a job. 

Not only would WTA employees be out of a job, but Western students and other Whatcom County residents would be much more limited in how and when they go to work, reducing economic potential for the transit-dependent, Lowry said.

“We take [students] to and from work,” Lowry said. “If we cut services it’ll impact the way they get there.”

Mike Toner, a WTA mechanic, said he fully supports a sales tax increase over service reductions.

“This is a time where public transit is really needed,” Toner said, “And it’s important that we keep it going.”

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