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Follow TURFPoliticos now want a driveway tax to fund roads
Link to article here.
I hope I'm not alone in thinking these people have lost their minds. Sadly, the Dallas City Council has also floated this idea and Austinites are already paying this type of tax.
Posted on Wed, Aug. 18, 2010
Mission City Council approves 'driveway tax' to fund roads
By BRAD COOPER
The Kansas City Star
Mission homeowners and businesses are going to pay for roads in a new way that officials believe breaks ground in the Midwest.
Instead of relying on sales and property taxes for roads, the city will start charging fees based on how much traffic properties produce.
The City Council on Wednesday night approved a new fee charging every homeowner $72 a year and small businesses $3,558 a year beginning in December.
Larger businesses that generate lots of traffic, such as Mission Bank, could pay $5,659 a year. A drive-thru fast food restaurant could pay $12,200 a year. Target could pay as much as $64,750 annually.
City officials and some local experts believe the fee, sometimes called a “driveway tax,” would be the first in Kansas and possibly in the entire Midwest.
The new fee is aimed at properties that produce the most traffic and put the most wear and tear on roads. Big-box stores are going to be charged more than residential homes, which don’t generate as much traffic.
It affects roughly 5,650 developed or developable properties, including churches, schools and government buildings that are tax-exempt but still generate traffic.
Engineering formulas estimate that a single-family home generates about 9 1/2 vehicle trips a day. The Target store, meanwhile, generates about 8,500 trips a day. McDonald’s is predicted to produce 2,700 trips.
The fee is expected to raise $1.2 million a year to help finance $38 million in road improvements during the next 10 years. It also will help fund a new express bus service between Overland Park and the Country Club Plaza that will run through Mission.
City officials said they desperately needed the money for deteriorating streets. But some residents said it’s a bad time economically for what’s essentially a tax increase.
The fee has had limited use across the country, but has become popular in Oregon, where it’s been adopted in at least 18 cities.
The fee is gradually spreading nationwide because it’s a more direct way to pay for road costs by charging the people and businesses that create the most traffic.