As I have mentioned before, we are always looking for citizen input. Lately, some of what we’re hearing isn’t always making sense – people want us to fix our roads but they don’t want to pay for it.
Back in May 2019, the Town of Chino Valley held an election asking the citizens for a property tax for a road maintenance program. The amount per taxpayer was fairly cheap, and gave the town the ability to maintain our 153 miles of roads every seven years. The initial proposal had a sunset of 20 years, giving our citizens the ability to rate our performance. If we didn’t perform as promised, then let the property tax sunset. If we followed through with what we promised, then let’s keep our nice roads looking nice.
Recently at our Citizens Academy, Town Manager Cecilia Grittman explained to the class that the measure had failed and that we will continue to struggle to put money into the roads at the rate needed. A couple of the citizens in the class felt that it should be brought before the voters again, claiming the outreach wasn’t as widespread as it could have been. The measure failed pretty conclusively – almost by 75%, so it isn’t likely that we will commit time or resources to putting this in front of our voters any time soon.
One thing we know to be true – this is a state issue. We don’t have enough money through the Highway User Revenue Fund (HURF) to fund road maintenance. Those funds are what the town receives through the gas tax. The gas tax can only be raised by the state, and it has not been raised since 1991. Almost 30 years with no increase in the gas tax – no wonder the state is struggling to keep up throughout the state with its road infrastructure. We have put some of our general fund money int road maintenance, but it’s a fly hitting a freight train.
Representative Noel Campbell, with support from Senate President Karen Fann and Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers, is proposing House Bill 2899. Besides some housekeeping things, this bill would increase the gas tax by six cents a year through the next three years, essentially doubling the funding to cities and towns for road maintenance. Representative Campbell has stated that Arizona road lanes have increased by 32%, but the purchasing power of the state’s gas tax to maintain them has dropped by 48%. With Arizona tourism being a $1 billion industry, wouldn’t an increase in our gas tax proportionately spread the hurt around? Representative Campbell also states that the rate of traffic fatalities on Arizona’s rural roads is the third highest in the nation and more than double the fatality rate on all other roads in the state. Rural and local communities cannot fix the miles of roads with current funding.
There are many other facts that tend to support the need for this type of funding, but the point to be made is that this is a significant and important state problem. We can make some changes to our budget to attempt to put more money from other sources on the roads – but it won’t be enough.
If the economy continues to boom as it is, the increase in sales tax revenues will help somewhat; but it isn’t necessarily sustainable. If Chino Valley is fortunate to get another grocer or another large sales tax producer, it also will significantly help. There are a lot of balls in the air as we are working on trying to come to a solution for road maintenance without significantly hurting current programming. Our Library, Senior Center, Aquatics Center and Community Center are gems of our community. We’ve been careful to not add additional programs or add additional staff, keeping things lean.
Please get involved; we could use some input for these challenges. QCBN
By Darryl Croft
Darryl Croft is the mayor of Chino Valley.
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