Wasteful Sound Transit wants $15 billion more of your tax dollars

Taken from KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

Sound Transit is preparing to ask the Legislature to put together a ballot measure next year asking for $15 billion.

According to The Seattle Times, the $15 billion would be raised through a new property tax, higher sales taxes, car tab taxes, or some combination of all of them. Or, they said we’re open to other sources. Of course, they’ll take any money they possibly can get.

They would reportedly ask homeowners for $150 per $100,000 of assessed value. So if you have a $700,000 home, which is close to a median home in Seattle, you would have to give another $735 a year on top of the massive amount you’re already giving them.

With that $15 billion they plan to expand to Everett, Issaquah, West Seattle, Ballard and down to Tacoma by 2030. So let’s say you have to pay an extra $700 a year for the next 16 years. That would be more than $10,000 for your family for something you wouldn’t be able to ride for 14 years.

People hear me talk lately about the Seattle tunnel. The Seattle tunnel is a distant, distant, distant second in boondoggles compared to Sound Transit. Sound Transit is billions and billions of dollars over budget. They have under-delivered and overspent as wildly as any public project in our nation’s history.

Sound Transit has done nothing to improve traffic. Traffic is horrible all around the region. They lied in their ads. They said it would alleviate traffic problems and then in their own environmental impact statement, they admitted it would not change traffic at all. So they lied to get the money and now they may get more.

Do you realize if you started putting away $10,000 for your kid’s college fund instead of giving it to Sound Transit over the next 14 years, you could, with interest, and with prudent investing possibly, pay for your kid’s college education? So you could either do that or you could give it to the most wasteful agency in our nation’s history.

Sound Transit is one of the most wasteful public projects in the history of the United States of America and the fact that they have the audacity to come back asking for $15 billion more – it is unbelievable.

Taken from KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

JS