Lakewood Residents Could be Asked to Pay More Taxes for Roads

Lakewood leaders worried about deteriorating streets could ask voters to approve a new taxing district to pay for upkeep on the city’s 431 lane miles of roads.

Members of the City Council are scheduled to meet with the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee in November to consider options such as raising the car tab license fee $20-$100 per vehicle.

With a majority vote, the council can impose a charge of up to $20 to form a Transportation Benefit District. Anything above that requires voter approval. But some councilmembers are wary of imposing any tax without voter approval. In years past, the TAC has lobbied for the City Council to impose a fee.

"New taxes are a bad idea in this economy," Lakewood City Councilman Walter Neary said. "New taxes are a very bad idea with so many unemployed people who have to register their vehicles."

A Transportation Benefit District is a quasi-municipal corporation and independent taxing district created for the sole purpose of funding transportation improvements within Lakewood's city limits.

The $20-$100 car tab fees being considered would be devoted to a 15-year pavement management program. The minimum tax, $20, would generate about $900,000 and would finance basic chip seals and overlay road maintenance. A $30 tax would provide $1.35 million per year.

Neither of those, however, would provide enough funding for capital road projects. That would require a $40 car license tax or other options such as sales tax or property tax increases.

A flat city budget has created challenges to pay for road improvements. There hasn't been a road overlay program since 2007. And next year’s projected budget remains flat. 

The Real Estate Excise Tax has shrunk from a $1 million source to an estimated $600,000. The REET is the city's funding mechanism to fuel capital road projects, and it affects the ability to conduct stand-alone overlay on arterial roads, said Desiree Winkler, transportation division manager for the city of Lakewood.

Winkler added that the longer the city waits to make road improvements, the more expensive construction costs get.

"We’re not going to like where we are in 5-10 years when it’s a lot more to repair the deferred maintenance." Winkler said.

Lakewood's streets, just like other cities’, are slowly wearing, according to the Pavement Condition Index. The PCI is used to indicate the condition of a roadway. Lakewood's streets have an average PCI of 75 out of 100, with zero being the worst.

It would drop to 65 with no treatment in five years. Maintaining a current 72-78 range would cost $5 million a year, Winkler said.

Neighboring Tacoma has an average of 53.

Jason Whalen, Lakewood City Councilman, is concerned about any tax at this point, but he agrees that the city should provide some well-deserved and much needed capital improvement options to consider as a benefit to the TBD other than pavement management, such as sidewalks and bike-friendly paths.

"We need to work on making greater connectivity within the city for pedestrians and bikes," Whalen said. "If we want to attract families that will stay here and invest their lives and resources in this community, we have to provide better family-friendly infrastructure."

Bill Larkin, chairman of the Transportation Advisory Committee, said he can’t speak for the group, but most likely it will recommend something greater than $20. He said at a minimum the city needs the $20 fee to keep the streets from deteriorating.

"Down the road it's going to cost them a heck of a lot more than it would if we did it in a systematic manner," Larkin said. "That’s exactly what Tacoma has gone through. They just let it go and it’s in terrible condition and they are spending a lot of money to correct the problem.  I don’t want our city to be in that position years down the road."

Committee member Paul Wagemann said that for six years, roads haven’t gotten the attention that they'd hoped.

"What I’ve seen, if we do a $20 tab it generates 20 percent of your projected need. That’s a bad thing. You cause pain but you don’t get what you need."

Larkin said the public needs to know exactly what they would get in a proposed tax. The city has created a list of specific projects that would be paid for with the new taxing district.

(Click on the attached PDFs for maps and project lists.)

Grants have been key to funding city transportation projects in Lakewood.

The city wants to make improvements on two of the most widely used streets, Bridgeport and South Tacoma Way and is in line for more than $7 million in federal funding. But they require more than $800,000 in TBD funding, and the city could lose the grants if it can’t identify its portion of the money.