By David Steinkraus
Journal Times | Posted: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 12:00 am
YORKVILLE - The County Board decided Tuesday to delay its vote on a regional transit authority until its next meeting on Feb. 24, but many citizens showed up in the board chambers to voice their opinions.
Although Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail has been the focus of most comments, the proposal sent to Gov. Jim Doyle is broader than that.
It suggests that the state create a permanent regional transit authority which could be joined by municipalities in southeastern Wisconsin. This permanent RTA would oversee not only a commuter rail project but also integration of the various bus systems, and it would have the authority to replace local property tax support of mass transit with a sales tax of up to 0.5 percent.
The board resolution does not express specific support for the tax but it does ask that any board with taxing authority be elected rather than appointed and that each municipality be allowed to approve or disapprove a transit tax.
Both those points - a tax and an elected versus an appointed board - drew comments from several people.
"Everybody knows the state of our economy. I'd love to have a Ferrari. I don't because I can't afford it," said Roseanne Kuemmel of Caledonia. "And we can't afford this."
Kuemmel said her husband works in downtown Milwaukee and can be there in 25 minutes by driving, she said. Taking a train would require at least double the time, would require him to find transportation to his workplace from the station in Milwaukee, and leave him unable to make stops after work.
Fred Dooley said he had looked at the rider projections for KRM and concluded that they are not reasonable because Amtrak's Hiawatha service has only 500,000 riders annually. Fewer riders means less revenue, he said, which means greater support from tax money.
"What's being sold to us is something by advocates so that we have something in place," he said. "and we all know that once something's in place it never goes away. Then we just need more and more and more money to support this thing."
Comparing KRM to Amtrak is not proper, said Mark Giese of Mount Pleasant, one of several supporters who spoke to the board. The Amtrak station is much farther from Racine, making it less convenient, and that service is significantly more expensive than the current Metra service to Chicago, he said.
James Colsmith of the Town of Raymond said he favors commuter rail and would benefit from it. It's safer than automobiles are, and less subject to the weather, he said.
"I've lived on a three different continents and a couple of Caribbean islands, and other than the Caribbean islands where you could see both sides of the island, you know this area really has some of the poorest transportation that I've had to live with," Colsmith said.
And Bill Bensman, of Milwaukee, appeared on behalf of Spreenkler, an association of creative professionals in Milwaukee. He said his group supports an appointed transit board and a sales tax, and doesn't believe that communities should be able to opt out of the tax.
"If we are truly going to embrace regionalism and a cross-county commuter rail system," he said, "we have to be willing to participate as members of a region and not as individual municipalities. Our entire region will experience the positive benefits of this system."