Kansas City tax renewal vote Nov 6th will affect bicyclists and pedestrians

Kansas City citizens will be voting November 6th on a proposal to renew a 1-cent sales tax that has been in place for years.

Kansas City councilwoman Beth Gottstein sent this summary of the issue today:

· The 1-cent sales tax is essential to addressing the infrastructure needs of Kansas City's neighborhoods, including paving streets, filling potholes, removing metal plates, controlling flood waters.

· It does not raise taxes, but renews an already existing funding mechanism.

· At least 35% of the tax receipts generated from this measure must be used for neighborhood conservation, maintenance, and improvements, divided equally among Council districts; and at least 15% must be used for capital maintenance.

· For over 25 years, the capital improvements sales tax has pumped nearly $1 billion into critical projects as streets, sewers and flood drainage, bridges, sidewalks and parks. Since its last renewal, the City has completed over 500 individual neighborhood projects and made hundreds of citywide repairs and improvements.

For more information, please visit www.kcstreetsmart.com.

Columnist Steve Penn wrote about the vote in today's Star:

The sales tax extension won't necessarily take care of the entire backlog of deferred maintenance. But it will keep the city from drowning under the weight of it all. And that’s important.

Renewing the tax will help the situation for walking and bicycling in Kansas City simply because decaying and ill-maintained streets, paths, and sidewalks are significant barriers to safe walking and bicycling.

However, this vote will not be enough to solve Kansas City's bicycling and walking problem.

Kansas City has less than half the walking and bicycling of the national average and a big reason for that is lack of infrastructure. Kansas City does not have anything close to a complete, connected network of safe streets and paths for walking and bicycling. Instead the walking and bicycling network is fragmentary and disconnected.

The tax renewal will keep Kansas City's infrastructure situation from getting worse, and perhaps even make some modest improvements for those who walk and bicycle.

But to really make a leap forward to increase walking and bicycling in Kansas City--even just to get it up to the national average--we need to put pressure on the city to find a source of dedicated funding for bicycling and walking instrastructure.