urbanSTL

Not voting at all is just about the worst thing one could do. I never understood that rationale.

We voted and....

10% turnout is ridiculously low. It's going to be way higher than that with all pf these ballot issues.

thats what Slay tweeted but a bit more looking into it i keep seeing 27%, still low but better then 10

roger wyoming II wrote:^ maybe 10 is for the city, which I suspect will have a lot lower turnout than the county.

I would expect the county to have a decent turnout for an August election, just for the Dooley vote. Will be interesting to see the Dem/Rep percentage participation in the county.

with 1% reporting is 52% NO

I think by 10pm we should have an answer.

Plan B or really plan A if A7 doesn't pass is to quickly move to the gas tax and beat the Feds to it. There is a lot of talk about hiking the federal gas tax. So in early May before the Feds start working on a new transportation bill jeff city has 2 options; phase it 3-4 cents a year over 4/5 years and skip the voters or go for 15/20cents at once and ask the voters. If that happens, of course all of the non highway projects get dumped from the lists and not move on and the highway list is delayed 10 months. Battle that would be worthwhile is to change the state law that says gas tax can only be spent on roads/bridges on MoDOT system. But that will be a tough battle

Really wish in addition to that, they'd initiate a plan to begin tolling I-70. If they did that, the idea of distributing the gas tax to local governments to spend on their roads would certainly be much easier to fathom.

And then of course, they could just start collecting online sales tax and funnel that to transit. Win/win/win for everyone.

If only government were that easy.

with 14% reporting it's up to 57% NO

jstriebel wrote:Really wish in addition to that, they'd initiate a plan to begin tolling I-70. If they did that, the idea of distributing the gas tax to local governments to spend on their roads would certainly be much easier to fathom.

And then of course, they could just start collecting online sales tax and funnel that to transit. Win/win/win for everyone.

If only government were that easy.

Gas tax as a whole won't ever be distributed to local governments. 5 of every 17 cents from the state gas tax already does that but there is no chance that 100% will ever be like that. I mean it will still be spent locally by local people like MoDOT district offices.

Wonder if KC streetcar would be dead since it's joined at the hip with A7

I wasn't clear, my fault. I didn't mean even close to 100%. I was just trying to piggy back on what you were saying about it being able to go to roads that aren't just MoDOT controlled.

You were saying that would be a difficult fight. I was just saying it might be less difficult if they had tolls to bring in additional revenue for the MoDOT roads.

I think if A7 passed, getting MoDOT to support an idea of giving 10-15% of state gas tax to transit would be feasible. 10-15% is about $50-75million a year

Once KC votes start rolling in I think we will have a better idea of A7...since A7 and their streetcar are a packaged deal

Is the rule stipulating that all gas taxes collected must go to roads in the Constitution, or just in the Revised Statutes?

Not sure. There was amendment 3 about 10 years ago but I think that dealt with the car sales tax

Going down 2-1 in StL County

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT NO.7
**STATE SALES AND USE TAX**
(Vote for ) 1
(WITH 306 OF 683 COUNTED 44.80%)
YES . . . . . . . . . . . . 30,490 34.23
NO. . . . . . . . . . . . . 58,591 65.77

I almost laughed at my polling place today. There was a "No on 7" sign that looked like it had been run over by a car surrounded by like 4 "Yes on 7" signs.

I think it will be beautiful if/when the heavily fund-raised Yes on 7 lobby is defeated by no-need-to-raise-money common sense.

imran wrote:I think it will be beautiful if/when the heavily fund-raised Yes on 7 lobby is defeated by no-need-to-raise-money common sense.

Not sure if common sense played as much of a roll as MO being a very anti tax red state. But again, gas tax is warming up in the bullpen and there are ways of raising it without going to the voters.

dbInSouthCity wrote:

imran wrote:I think it will be beautiful if/when the heavily fund-raised Yes on 7 lobby is defeated by no-need-to-raise-money common sense.

Not sure if common sense played as much of a roll as MO being a very anti tax red state. But again, gas tax is warming up in the bullpen and there are ways of raising it without going to the voters.

And I for one see nothing wrong with that. Should have been gas tax all along.

Jeff city pols have to move quickly on the gas tax, as I've said got to beat the Feds to it....

It's over.