OC Tax To San Diego Mayor: Support 241 Completion

This came over the transom yesterday from the OC Taxpayers Association:

To:        The Honorable Jerry Sanders, Mayor, City of San Diego

From:        Reed Royalty, President, Orange County Taxpayers Association

Date:        September 24, 2007

Subject:    Extension of SR-241 Toll Road                                                                

Most public testimony on the proposed completion of the SR-241 Toll Road in the counties of
San Diego and Orange focuses on the environment.

The Orange County Taxpayers Association (OCTax) cares about our environment too.  That’s one reason we support toll roads.  Free-flowing traffic causes less pollution than stop-and-go traffic.  Just as importantly, it generates economic wealth that enables us to maintain our parks, beaches, housing, water and sanitary systems, flood control, landfills, recycling facilities, fire protection and other services that enhance the environment.  The worst ecological disasters occur in economically distressed areas.  Good roads, by their effect on our economy, are essential to our environment.

Here are additional reasons OCTax supports the completion of the 241 Toll Road.

•    User fees (tolls) are better than taxes.  We are forced to pay taxes, whether we use a service or not.  We pay tolls voluntarily, in fair exchange for using the roads.

•    Measurable results are better than unknown results.  Drivers’ willingness to pay tolls is an absolute measure of customer satisfaction and investors’ judgment.

•    Practical solutions are better than waiting for miracles.  The toll roads were planned as freeways, but there was no taxpayers’ money to build them.  The Transportation Corridor Agencies stepped in and built 67 miles of first-class roads with investors’ money.  When the bonds are repaid, the toll roads will become freeways at little cost to taxpayers.

•    Voluntary investment is better than taxes to build infrastructure.  The Toll Roads are 85% funded by non-recourse revenue bonds, not taxpayer-guaranteed general obligation bonds.  Development Impact Fees (11%) and grants (4%) pay the rest.

Please support the extension of the SR-241 Toll Road.

cc:      Mayor Pro Tem Tony Young; Honorable Councilmembers Peters, Faulconer, Atkins, Maienschein, Fry, Madaffer, Hueso

Comments

[Butch Vanartsdalen]

The toll road spreads urban sprawl. We need more roads like a fat republican needs bigger pants. He needs a diet of course. Why? Beacause as Wendall Barry once wrote "movements that don't address root causes are doomed to failure"...the fat guy will fall ill in time. Our traffic is bad. I guess. (although we as a society have seen and predicted this migration to the coast for at least 25 years and at the same time let our developer masters control rates of growth through campaign contributions, but I digress...) The root cause of this is not any lack of roads. It is unfettered development and sprawl.Conservatives lost conservation after Richard Nixon ,our last great conservationist president. This is a key reason repub's are losing...and losing....and the bummer is of course that repub's have great ideas on alot of other things that die as they lose things like, well, congress. Stop the stupid 241... Republicans-- please reclaim the conservation movement-- it was yours at the start-- reclaim it---Stop the sprawl...

[butch Vanartsdalen]

The good news though is this--- and of course not from over the transom just out there floating around... The SD City Coun. was unmoved by the above letter and yesterday gave citizens the win and voted to study alternatives to the stupid 241 that don't impact parks and beaches---- bully for them Great result---

[TJ]

OK, Commissar -- how do you plan to tell people where they can live, in what kind of housing they can live in and what kind of transportation they can use.

They world's problem's would be so easy to solve if these pesky individuals would stop doing what they want and just listen to you!

[butch vanartsdalen]

Of course we tell people where to live and how to live all the time.It's all in the social compact we call zoning, land use rules, property rights regulations etc etc etc. You may not like it but there are vast tons of laws that regulate growth. You can't live here it's a national forest. You can't build your butcher shop there it's an R1 area. You can't build your sprawl creating toll road there because it goes thru a park etc etc etc. If we had no control over things like this you can bet your bottom dollar that profit would be our only guide and LA to San Diego would be cement with brief breaks for some asphalt.

[TJ]

So why not take it all the way, eh Commissar? Outlaw suburban tracts and make people live in hi-rises. Limit families to a single, fuel-efficient car.

Since you obviously know what's best for us better than we do, we'll put you in charge.

[butch vanartsdalen]

These are serious matters for serious people to discuss. You are not.Carry on with your hyperbole without me.Glad to see yet another city counsel sees it my way--- they must all be wrong too.

[TJ]

That's right. Leave it to serious thinkers like yourself. These matter are too important to entrust to mere citizens. After all, they might make the wrong choice...or at least not see things your way. We can't let freedom get in the way when the FATE OF THE PLANET is at stake!

[butch vanrtsdalen]

ha! I AM a mere cit. like yourself--and-- I guess I am as serious of a thinker as I need to be on this one old man. And our elected representatives voted against your position representing their constituencies-- I guess the system works and not everyone agrees that urban sprawl is so hot??????

[Rifleshot]

The "high-rise" metropolis everyone seems to embrace as a solution to traffic is not without its own problems. The social ramifications of high-density areas can make traffic concerns seem trivial. Let's have some serious discussions before chucking the concept of the well-planned suburb.

[TJ]

And our elected representatives...

"Our"? The toll road don't go through the City of San Diego, so who cares?

I guess the system works and not everyone agrees that urban sprawl is so hot??????

Except the vast majority of Americans who want to live in it. I wonder many of those SD councilmembers live in hi-rises or get around on public transit?

[butch vanartsdalen]

I agree. I don't chuck the burbs, but if you have lived around OC for 30 or 40 years or so you have witnessed very poor planning, unchecked growth , pol corruption related to it and definitional urban sprawl.OC is done, stick a fork in it. No one is advocating some utopian metro scene just stopping this stupid road through a park. Here it is, we all want the money from the development and the allied trades, we elect and keep in power local electeds that by and large are loose for the developers and take donations liberally from them, we build out and waaaaay beyond, national migration has predicted for decades a huge move to the coasts and THEN we gripe about traffic and propose more roads will solve the traffic problem and improve quality of life. The traffic problems are here and will get worse until we attack the root causes which we will NEVER do given the above paradigm.Very glad to see that yet another city council agrees with this proposition that the toll road is a joke.

[TJ]

Rifleshot:

Shhhh! Plato is busy planning The Republic. Don't interrupt!

[butch vanartsdalen]

TJ-- That's all you got? ZZZZzzzzZZZZzzzzz