Where the H do they go from here?

By KEVIN COURTNEY, Register Staff Writer

Voters Tuesday soundly rejected Measure H, the half-cent transportation sales tax, but what's not clear is what happens next.

Do backers accept the vote as the will of the people and make do with the limited road and highway money now available?

Do they ignore Tuesday's anti-tax sentiment and place the tax on the November ballot where it will compete with a local school bond and state financing measures?

Is there a way to scale back and proceed with part of the plan to improve the Jamieson Canyon Road corridor?

The Napa County Transportation Planning Agency, the sponsor of Measure H, meets June 21 to consider the next step.

Councilman Kevin Block, a Napa representative to the agency, said first, members need to understand what voters were saying Tuesday.

"They may be telling us the roads are fine or the roads aren't fine, but we don't want to pay more to fix them," Block said. Or maybe voters were saying that Measure H wasn't the right spending plan, he said.

The agency might do well to hire someone to poll voters to answer these questions, Block said. In the meantime, it's too early to talk about another transportation tax election, he said.

The city of Napa might want to consider putting its own street tax on the ballot, leaving improvements to state highways in the Jamieson Canyon corridor to another time, Napa Councilman Harry Martin said.

If city voters were no more positive on Measure H than the 52 percent countywide yes vote, such a strategy probably wouldn't work in November, Martin said. Transportation taxes need two-thirds approval from voters.

Given the anti-government mood nationally, Martin predicted a November ballot with state infrastructure bonds, a local school bond and a transportation tax would face an uphill challenge.

Mike Zdon, the agency's executive director, said staff will recommend the November 2008 presidential election for another transportation tax attempt.

Presidential elections draw the most voters, which is a good thing when trying to pass a tax, Zdon said. Low turnout elections like Tuesday's tend to draw more conservative voters, he said.

Only 40 percent of Napa County' registered voters cast a ballot Tuesday. In the 2004 presidential election, turnout was 82 percent.

Leon Brauning, a leader of the anti-Measure H opposition, said officials who talk about another transportation tax aren't reading what voters said on Tuesday.

"The voters sent a message to the political leaders telling them to manage the government with the funds they now have just as the average person must live with the income he or she has," Brauning said in a press release.

Voters noted the large amounts of money given by development interests to Yes on H coffers, Brauning said. Locals don't want to support these "profiteers" and fast-growth interests, he said.

The decision on a possible second sales tax attempt will be made by elected representatives of the five cities and members of the Board of Supervisors on the Transportation Planning Agency board.

Because Napa County shares Jamieson Canyon Road with Solano County, Napa needs to coordinate with Solano, which was expected to share the cost of Jamieson widening, Zdon said. On Tuesday, Solano's half-cent transportation sales tax garnered only a 45 percent yes vote, 21 percent below what was needed.

In the wake of such a major defeat, the Solano Transportation Authority may live with the status quo for a while, while trying to finish preliminary studies for Jamieson Canyon widening to four lanes, Daryl Halls, the authority's executive director, said Wednesday.

Napa and Solano counties have enough state and federal money to finish Jamieson Canyon's environmental studies and much of the design work, Halls said.

The additional $120 million needed to actually build the expressway is nowhere in sight, but, with persistence and luck, financing might be cobbled together over the next decade, he said.

Zdon said he is worried about finishing environmental studies for Jamieson Canyon, then having nothing happen. Because of delays, $1 million worth of recent environmental studies are having to be redone because the data was considered stale.

It might make more sense to take Napa's limited resources and do the cheapest element of the Jamieson Canyon corridor, the proposed Highway 221 flyover at Highway 29, east of the Butler Bridge, Zdon said.

The widening of Jamieson Canyon and construction of a full interchange at Jamieson Canyon/Highway 29/Airport Boulevard would be put on the back burner.

The $25 million flyover could get started within a few years if Napa County made it the primary highway project for the next decade, Zdon said.

The Jamieson Canyon corridor is a state highway, but Caltrans does not have the money to fund the work without a significant local contribution, Zdon said.

Leon Garcia, an American Canyon councilman who sits on the Transportation Planning Agency, doesn't think the sales tax should be dropped.

"Transportation is an important enough issue that you can't give up on it," Garcia said. "You have to reach folks at the level where it matters to them."

Halls predicted that congestion on Jamieson Canyon Road will get progressively worse in coming years. Tie-ups where Jamieson hits the Interstate 80/680 interchange will become bigger when the new Benicia bridge is finished, he said.

Because Solano lacks a local transportation tax, Caltrans will have to slow plans for $1 billion worth of improvements to the 80/680 interchange, Halls said.

Halls predicted that as traffic gets worse on Jamieson Canyon, more motorists will divert to alternative routes, such as American Canyon Road and Wooden Valley Road.

Supervisor Bill Dodd, the Transportation Planning Agency's chair, said elected officials have their work cut out for them. "We have to do a better job of communicating with the public about where their tax dollars are going and why the road and street money isn't there," he said.

Voters won't pass a transportation tax until they are convinced it is needed and the money will be well spent, Dodd said. "I don't know how bad streets and roads will have to get before people take that next step," he said.

Mayor Jill Techel said she will be asking for fuller reports from city staff on the Napa's ability to fund street improvements without a local transportation tax.

"We need to let them know exactly what we can do with the funding we have," she said.

In the meantime, the city needs to consider raising the street impact fees paid by developers, Techel said. Fees may not be covering the impacts of growth, she said.

In rejecting the first transportation tax put to them, Napa voters were not unusual, Zdon said. Most counties have to try two or three times before they get two-thirds success.

Transportation financing is so complex that voters need a lot of educating, Zdon said. Marin and Solano counties did not pass their transportation taxes until the fourth try, he said.

Napa also falls into a category of smaller, semi-rural counties where transportation taxes traditionally have a tough time passing, Zdon said. Urban counties typically have worse street and highway problems, which make a clearer case for a tax, he said.

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