Our community needs transit and revenue. But the funding plans in Sound Transit 3 Proposition 1 are not practical and do not merit passage. This issue is non-partisan and not ideological.

According to the brochure recently received from Sound Transit, the following tax revenues will constitute 51.5 percent of the package: and additional car tab fee of 0.8 percent on the value of a vehicle, a sales tax increase of 0.5 percent and a property tax increase of 25 cents for each $1,000 of assessed value. The other funding sources are Sound Transit 2, bond proceeds, federal grants, fares and interest.

The main goal of the light rail routes is to get commuters to and from their jobs on time. But there is no new specific corporate funding stream in the plan as described above to fund the cost of the commute.

Senior citizens and those who need cars for work would be severely affected. For a car worth $15,000 a 0.8 percent car tab fee increase would add another $120 to an $85 motor vehicle registration. For a car worth $20,000 the additional fee would be $160. However, the transit plan includes no significant expansion of door to door transit in small shuttles for the elderly and the disabled. There is no significant expansion of small bus routes, service hours and service frequency at the neighborhood level. Bus capital ($2.298 billion) is only 7.6 percent of the project.

Senior citizens expressed their concerns in the soundtransit3.org “Narrative draft system plan” and “Responses to draft plan open-ended survey question.”

“ … we can not support this huge project as we try to live out our golden years w/o having to scrimp further to have just the basic things to survive….food & shelter.”

“ … as a senior citizen and a disable veteran you are killing us with your taxes if you keep this up i will be homeless.”

“Why is ‘inflation’ being figured into the costs of construction when seniors see no increase in SSA payments because there ‘is little or no inflation’?”

“$200 per year may not seem a lot to kids pulling down large salaries at Amazon, for instance, but increased taxes are killing seniors and forcing them to move.”

“When I can no longer drive, I will have to walk more than 2 miles up and down hills to get to a grocery store or to a bus … This new program would not alter that.”

The main response received so far from ST3 proponents, who have cars, is that people should live without a car. However the transit plan is not balanced enough to solve the problem of long waiting times for bus transfers and infrequent service in our neighborhoods.

Linda Seltzer

Redmond