Boulder County’s stature in Colorado will quickly shrink if voters in November vote not to extend the county’s 0.1% transportation sales tax, the county’s former transportation director said this week.
“Without this sales tax, anything good for mobility will not happen in Boulder County,” George Gerstle told a group of local public officials. “There will be just road maintenance. Everything else will just grind to a halt. “
“This tax,” Gerstle added, “will keep Boulder County a vital economically healthy part of the region. Without it, it will just be another eastern Colorado community that serves cars.”
Gerstle mapped out the importance of extending the 20-year-old transportation tax during a membership meeting of the Louisville-based Commuting Solutions. The nonprofit works to expand commuting options in Boulder and Broomfield county.
Gerstle is a member of the “Keeping Boulder County Moving” campaign, formed earlier this month to lobby for the tax extension. Boulder County Commissioner Claire Levy is also a member of “Keeping Boulder County Moving” and she also spoke about the ramifications of turning down 1C.
“The county will no longer fund current transit services, no new shoulders on roads, regional trails, county transit services, no mobility assistance programs for those who are mobility limited…including the elderly,” Levy said.
The shuttle to Eldorado Canyon and Hessie trailheads, Ride Free Lafayette and Via Mobility will be severely limited if the sales tax extension fails, proponents said.
Boulder County will also lose millions of state and federal transportation funds that require local math, putting improvements to the Longmont Diagonal, State Highway 66, State Highway 287 and the Foothills Highway on the chopping block, supporters said.
“We are able to do things above and beyond just basic maintenance on our roads,” Levy said.
The sales tax —which went into effect in 2001 — has helped fund 97 miles of paved road shoulders, 23 miles of new regional trails, 13 intersection improvements, nine transit services and programs and six pedestrian underpasses, according to the county.
The sales tax equates to one cent on a $10 purchase and was extended by voters in 2007, she said. The tax is set to expire in 2024 but the commissioners decided to put it on the 2023 ballot to prepare if it fails.
"We need to know in advance,” Levy said. “Transportation planning has a long lead time and we need to do our planning for all our transportation improvements in Boulder County.”
The measure has no organized opposition, she said.
Other counties are closely watching the fate of 1C to see if voters have an appetite for tax measures in the post-COVID world, Levy said.
“This is the first time anybody is going to voters since covid, and it’s in a time of inflation and economic uncertainty,” Levy said. “Voters are just coming back and maybe thinking about funding things again through ballot measures.”
