Road repair bond

Flanked by elected and appointed city officials, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a handful of initiatives and reforms that would increase city revenue for road repaving by nearly $50 million a year at the "under reconstruction" corner of National and Barrington Boulevards in West Los Angeles.

Today's Los Angeles Times has two editorials that don't quite go together.

On Wednesday, the City Council Public Works and Gang Reduction Committee ordered city staff to study funding options for a bond proposal to fix city streets.

Last night, Council Member Joe Buscaino chaired a special meeting of the Public Works Committee of the Los Angeles City Council. The hearing focused on a road bond proposal that could repair hundreds of miles of L.A.'s streets but spread the cost over decades.

It's official. Moments ago, Council Members Mitch Englander and Joe Buscaino pulled the plug on efforts to place a $3 billion property tax bond that would fund road repair from the Spring ballot. The Council Members ammeded their motion requesting the city attorney draft a motion with language for a ballot in "the future."

Municipal bond rates are at historic lows.  A memo by two respected faculty members at the UCLA Anderson Forecast (available at Streetsblog, for some reason link to city website is broken) suggests the city take advantage of these low rates to fund a $3 billion program to resurface, rehabilitate, and reconstruct city streets. This same logic extends to any local investment activity - because rates are low, it’s a good time to build or repair anything the city will need in the future. Street repair is an especially good choice for a city experiencing an historically high unemployment rate because a higher proportion of street investment goes into labor and wages than for other investments, a subway tunnel for instance.

At the start of the public hearing on the resolution asking the City Attorney to draft a bond measure for the May 21 that would dedicate 29 years of taxes towards road repair bonds, Council President Herb Wesson announced that the Council would not vote or debate the measure until next Tuesday. While Wesson offered praise to both sponsors of the legislation, Council Members Mitch Englander and Joe Buscaino, he was also concerned that there wasn't enough public outreach or participation in the construction of the measure.

Last week, two of Los Angeles' newest Council Members, Mitch Englander and Joe Buscaino, made news by announcing a campaign for a $3 billion bond to fund road repair on L.A.'s worst streets.  The "Los Angeles Emergency Local Street Safety and Traffic Improvement Measure" would need a two-thirds vote of city voters in May 21 and would create a twenty year real-estate tax that would be bonded against to fix the 31% of city roads that rate either a "D" or "F" on road conditions in the next ten years.