Metro to Voters: Pass Our Tax or We'll Cut Ya' in Half

• Brad, What are you smoking? Wentzville or O'Fallon are in St. Charles county and don't get Metro service. If Metro charged a fare to meet expenses, you couldn't afford it--the fare would be $7.00 each way with bus service approximately one bus every hour. Check it out. Metro gets federal funds & grants, Illinois provides a huge part of the support; however, Missouri provides no support for any transit system in the state--the state of MO wants the local governments to foot the entire bill. It is a convenience for me [living in the city] to use the system. I have great time on the "shoe leather" express.

• If Metro didn't tell voters its financial situation, people would scream (and rightly!) when the drastic service cuts come next year and ask, "Why didn't we know about this?" Even with all the publicity last year about budget shortfalls, rising fuel costs, and funding diversions, after the service cuts were announced people said that they didn't know their bus was going to get cut. But when Metro does its duty and tells people the situation, it gets a nice illustration of a train robbery. Very fair. It's true that to some degree transit subsidizes sprawl, J. Brad, in the sense that it does allow people to move freely around the region, even if they don't live in the urban core. But Metro doesn't serve St. Charles County at all, so I'm not sure that's a fair point about Wentzville and O'Fallon. Saying "Raise the fares" to cover the full cost of transit really means "Shut transit down" because no one would ride it, just like people would severely curtail a lot of their car trips if they had to pay the true price of roads every time they got into their cars. A good transportation network is part of the economic engine that drives the state and is a public good - like schools, or police departments, or roads - that everyone pays for, because everyone benefits from it, whether directly (ride the bus every day, have a kid that goes to public school) or indirectly (shops at businesses that can run because their workforce has access due to good roads and bus routes, and has customers because police keep the area safe). I guess businesses benefit from police protection out of the general funds, too, but not charging them a police protection fee isn't exactly subsidizing sprawl, in my opinion.

• Or they could just raise the fares. Let's call this what it is. This is an attempt to tax businesses in St. Louis City and St. Louis County in order to make it possible for businesses in O'Fallon and Wentzville to continue paying a smidgen over minimum wage, even though there's no way for someone who gets paid that to afford to get to work out there, and even less chance of them being able to afford to live out there. If they had to pay their employees enough to buy cars, or pay them enough to be able to afford to rent an apartment in Wentzville or O'Fallon ... well, that'd be a pay raise, and that's unthinkable. So like any good business in 21st century America, they're finding it a better use of their money to lobby for the taxpayers to shoulder the cost of their doing business. I vote no. Even though I depend on Metro myself, I'd rather pay a higher fare to ride it than pay a higher sales tax on EVERYTHING in order to subsidize suburban sprawl and use taxpayer funds to help businesses out in white-flight land suppress local wages.

• "So is Baer's threat realistic[?]... According to Baer, it's very real." That's some sterling analysis, man. Did you expect Baer to chuckle and say, "Naw, I was just kidding"?

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