It was my privilege to serve on the City Council, as well as be Turlock’s representative on the predecessor to StanCog. StanCog is the transportation planning agency for Stanislaus County. There has been some controversy about the effect on Measure B of Stanislaus County passing a separate transportation tax in the future. It is simple Measure B will terminate if the County passes a separate measure in the future. Every past proposal for a county transportation tax required a major portion of the funds to be allocated to each city for road maintenance. Thus if Measure B is terminated by a new County tax Turlock will have a replacement for the Measure B funds to continue to maintain our streets. Measure B funds will never be used for a North County Corridor road.
An approach proposed in place of Measure B was to force Turlock property owners who have chosen not to buy property in subdivisions with assessment districts to join such a district for road maintenance. Plain and simple this would be a property tax increase. It would particularly harmful to seniors. In most cases, seniors spend less money on taxable sales and drive less, so under Measure B they will be less affected by the one-half cent sales taxes. Just the opposite would be true with an assessment district where everyone would pay the same amount based on parcel size or some other formula. Seniors would not benefit from spending less and driving less. Those who have chosen not be subject to an assessment district would be forced into one. In addition, those outside of Turlock who use our roads to shop will contribute to the maintenance of those roads.
Another suggestion was to try and get Sacramento to pay for the repairs. That ignores the reality that Sacramento is controlled by government employee unions that want every dollar to boast government payrolls. Filing lawsuits and like efforts overcome this bias are doomed to failure.
Measure B represents the only realistic way to meet our critical need to repair Turlock’s broken roads.
— Ron Hillberg
