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This Bellingham Herald article indicates that the Whatcom Transit Authority sales tax increase has been defeated. The measure would have increased the rate from 0.6% to 0.8%* and avoided drastic service cuts. Election results here.
Discussion on what cuts to make have already begun, as discussed further in the article. A 14% cut is needed, and the question, as ever, is whether to eliminate Sunday service or make deeper cuts to weekdays and Saturdays. There are significant city/suburb valences in this debate.
TCC has more. The Herald’s Traffic blog has an absurd amount of vote analysis.
* The State maximum is 0.9%
Off topic so delete this, but … [deleted]
From the Herald:
Well, maybe this will be a wake-up call to the students that voting matters. The difference was less than a thousand votes and there are roughly 14,000 students that get a “free” bus pass at WWU.
Wow, 900+ votes made the difference. Agreed, WWU students could have made the difference. I wonder though, how many of them are registered to vote in other counties?
Probably most of them (if they’re registered at all). My son changed his voter registration before the election but was still unable to vote. Strange rule that if he was a newly registered voter he would have be able to cast a ballot but because he was changing registration it had to be done 30 days prior to the election. He’s ready for next time but I’d bet 99% of the student body isn’t and I don’t think the YES campaign made any sort of outreach to the student body.
You are confusing Western students with Western’s campus. Only about 25% of Western students live on campus, and those who do are almost exclusively freshmen and sophomores. Most freshmen choose to remain registered to vote at their parent’s address. They think of Bellingham as a place they visit for 9 months rather than their new community. Over time, attitude changes and juniors and seniors tend to become more engaged in the broader community and are more likely to register and vote locally.
Additionally, students who live on campus are actually less likely to take the bus on a regular basis since they can walk to class, most don’t have off-campus jobs, and they all have meal plans and eat in the cafeterias.
Precincts 233 and 237 (the two “lowest turnout” precincts) consist almost entirely of on-campus housing. Between these two there were only 421 people registered at all, despite there being about 3,000 students living in the dorms in these two precincts.
If you look at the precincts which generally have high concentrations of Western Students (212, 213, 214, 215, 219, 221, 232, 234, 238, 240, 242, 248), you get an average turnout of 43%, which is fairly close to the county-wide average of 46%.
I suspect that Western students living off campus were a major part of why Bellingham voted so overwhelmingly in favor of the measure (65%) while the rest of the county voted it down.
Meanwhile Skagit Transit announces their May 4th service increases.
http://skat.org/index.cfm?do=page&pageID=36674
This is thanks to the sales tax increase approved last year.
Thought I’d throw in some detail:
“Skagit Transit has announced its plans to introduce an expanded level of transit service beginning May 4. Transit riders will benefit from increased service hours (earlier and later routes), additional trips on the Everett Express (Route 90X), new fixed and Dial-a-Ride routes, expanded Saturday service, and the re-introduction of Sunday service in urban areas.”
This news release is dated April 30, 2009. Most of these changes have already happened.
I seem to remember a few years ago Skagit Transit was in terrible shape. It’s so strange to me that they are adding Sunday service while Kitsap Transit, CT, WTA, and probably others, are cutting it out completely.
Skagit Transit recently had a sales tax increase approved.