How to pee Off an Arrogant Pedalcyclist 4361

"Scott en Aztl‡n"

You should have copied the rest of the article. The only actual "road" project was reconstruction of a bridge, and only $100,000 was included for that. There was another $150,000 for studying the best way to route traffic through the business district. Otherwise none of this bond money was actually for roads. Furthermore, I'll bet that motor vehicle revenues (gas tax transfers from the state and vehicle registration fees) will more than cover the actual road construction portions of the borrowed money. Politicians often use roads as an excuse for raising taxes, when the bulk of the money is actually going somewhere else. This is clearly the case for your example. The $100,00 included in this bond for bridge reconstruction could easily have been paid from the 1.38 Million dollars in motor vehicle related user fees collected by Greensboro . Instead, a portion of these funds were diverted to pay for $255,298 of sidewalk construction. It is much easier to get people to approve a bond issue when you include "road improvement" in the list of things the bond money is to be used for. The truth is, the bond money devoted to road improvement doesn't even come close to replacing the road revenues that are being diverted to other purposes. It is also important to note, that property taxes on vehicles are a significant portion of the revenue stream. The increased revenue buttociated with the rise in property taxes on vehicles will more than cover the cost of the $250,00 borrowed for the bridge reconstruction and traffic study. So, all you have done is confirm that motor vehicle derived revenues are paying more than the amount needed to build and maintain roads.

Interestingly for Greensboro, property taxes provide less revenue than user fees and licenses. Less than 10% of the Greensboro budget is related to transportation. And only a tiny fraction of that is used for street maintenance. The bulk of the money spent on maintaining Greensboro streets comes from transfers from the state of North Carolina. And according to the Greensboro budget (see ) portions of this money are used to pay for "the construction of sidewalks."

Again, if you look closely, you will see that motor vehicle derived revenues are not only paying for the roads, the revenue is actually being diverted to pay for other city services. Bike riders need to thank car owners for providing them with subsidies. Clearly other property taxes would have to increase if cars were suddenly eliminated.

Ed