I find the $200 million road bond proposal the most objectionable. There's a big difference between borrowing money to build roads and borrowing money to repair roads. If we want to borrow $40 million (as proposed) to build new roads, those bonds plus interest will be repaid by future users of those roads and that's fine—but we are also proposing to borrow $160 million to repair the damage done to existing roads by years of neglect. The city of Tucson borrowed $100 million 2 ½ years ago for the same purpose and that's one reason why the city's bond rating was recently reduced.
We've torn up the roads but have refused to tax ourselves to pay for repairs. Instead we propose to borrow the money and let future users pay for what we couldn't or wouldn't pay for ourselves.
The proposal by Joe Boogaart to raise the sales tax to pay for road repairs seems to me to be driven more by polling than by logic. Polling suggests that sales taxes are the most acceptable tax increases, but logic would say that a gas tax increase would put the burden where it belongs, on the backs of the users of the roads.
—Loring K. Green
