Don't Back Down

Obviously, there are those of you out there (I'm talking about the people who actually care what the American Community Survey may represent) who do read before they sign. But these days, when buying a house requires a lawyer because of the monstrous stack of documents that would take you months to read through, and even applying for a credit card can require hours of reading if you really read every single word, do you read everything before you put your name on the dotted line?

Apparently there is a significant percentage of people here in Charlotte who don't (I suspect that there are plenty in other places too).

For those who haven't been paying attention, it's recently been verified that the petition to force a referendum to repeal the transit tax (enacted in 1998) has 48,000 valid signatures, which means a November vote on the issue is likely. So why is it an issue if people pay attention to what they are signing? Because it seems that those who asked for people to sign the petition didn't actually tell folks what they were signing, and many of those who did sign didn't bother to read. But it's also apparent that many of the people who voted for the original tax in 1998 did so based on what they were told, rather than reading the fine print as well, so the proverbial knife can cut both ways.

When it was pitched in 1998 - and I realize that a lot of people may not have been here, or if they were, may not remember (or care), the half-cent sales tax was pitched as being for light rail. Unfortunately that fine print said no such thing. Sure, some of the money would undoubtedly go to light rail, but the tax was actually to pay for mass transit in general - and in fact, last year out of $77 million generated, some 68 percent, or just over $52 million went to operate - gasp - buses. This is horrible news to Charlotte, because buses are associated with low-class cities, not a world-class city like Charlotte, who demands light rail everywhere.

Unfortunately, light rail is expensive, with the South Boulevard line alone projected to cost $463 million to build (it was originally slated for just $227 million), not to mention operate. That's not even considering the fact that it's not going to help congestion much, due to the love affair that Charlotteans have with their cars. Sure, in a relatively high-density area like South End it might relieve things a bit, but it won't help people get from South Park to University City. We don't have the population density of Manhattan, and it's very likely that we never will - and certainly not across that vast area.

Enter the petition to repeal the sales tax and begin the posturing. One side wants to get rid of the tax, since it appears the only way to kill the light rail project that won't do anything and slow the massive investment in buses that has served to increase ridership while completely destroying any semblance efficiency. The other side - composed mostly of politicians - offers up a terrible view of what will happen to not just the light rail project, but to this expanded bus system, and increased property taxes to boot. Talk about scare tactics.

Will it make a difference? The only way to truly know will be to look 20 years ahead and see. Chances are, if past evidence is any indicator, that even if the populace votes down the sales tax, that the city will go ahead and implement whatever they want - look at the arena referendum that the citizens clearly didn't want, but the city built anyway. So is a sales tax better than a property tax? You can argue that a sales tax is paid by everyone using the city, while a property tax is paid by only those living here. You make the call.

Ultimately what happened is that in both cases - the original vote to add it and the petition to put it up for vote again - no one bothered to read what they were signing. A large stack of papers or a bunch of fine print you can perhaps understand. But a petition should have only a paragraph or two (I never saw even a single signature collector, so I can't say). Surely we have time to read that.

What do you think?