After a half-century of public transportation subsidized by property taxes, metro Toledo’s bus system apparently will switch to a sales tax in the spring.
With 100 percent of Lucas County precincts reporting, preliminary results showed the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority proposal to collect a half-percent sales tax throughout the county carrying 54.9 percent of ballots cast, while in Rossford, preliminary final results showed almost exactly 60 percent of voters — 749 to 500 — supporting it.
Strong support for the TARTA proposal, on the ballot as Issue 12, in the existing service area carried the vote, more than offsetting opposition majorities in rural, outlying parts of Lucas County. The two levies, of a combined 2.5 mills, the agency now collects in Toledo, Ottawa Hills, Maumee, Sylvania, Sylvania Township, Waterville, and Rossford, will be abolished.
Both Laura Koprowski, the transit authority’s freshly appointed chief executive officer, and Kelsie Hoagland, president of its board of trustees, credited the sales tax’s success to supporters’ understanding the agency’s need for a more robust revenue stream to enable plans for better service.
“We really worked hard to bring together a diverse group of supporters,” said Ms. Koprowski, who is succeeding Kimberly Dunham as TARTA’s top administrator after Ms. Dunham accepted an offer to become chief of staff for the transit agency in Jacksonville, Fla.
The question’s passage will allow TARTA to “build momentum on a modern transit system that this community deserves and needs,” she said.
TARTA is in the midst of a public planning process it has dubbed TARTA Next to determine how its operations should be structured going forward and what types of vehicles that requires.
“I look forward to continuing this wonderful transformation we’ve been experiencing,” Ms. Hoagland said.
And Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said the vote represents “a tremendous victory for our region.
“Successful cities need dynamic public transportation, and we’ve been held back over the years because we have a quirky funding formula,” the mayor said. “...With the passing of this issue we have the ability to tap into more opportunities than in the past. I’m talking about economic development. Employers are struggling to find employees to work. Robust public transportation will help grow our economy and provide important means of transportation for our citizens.”
More immediately, TARTA plans to restore Sunday and holiday service that was dropped in early 2019 because of the agency’s troubled finances, which it attributed primarily to declining revenue from its property taxes and rising operating costs. Ms. Koprowski said plans are in the works to do that sometime during the first quarter of 2022.
The 0.5-percent sales tax is the same rate as transit taxes in Summit, Franklin, and Montgomery counties and less than those in Cuyahoga and Hamilton counties. But combined with the county-option sales tax and the base Ohio sales tax, it will give Lucas County a 7.75 percent sales tax — third highest in Ohio behind Cuyahoga and Hamilton — when it takes effect April 1. It will expire in 10 years unless it is renewed.
The sales tax is expected to generate about $32 million in annual revenue, more than double the $13.5 million TARTA now receives from its levies. Along with paying for expanded service routes and hours, TARTA officials have said additional revenue will give the agency desperately needed matching funds to qualify for federal grants to buy new buses to replace its aging fleet, while some of the money will be dedicated to “transit-related” street and sidewalk improvements to be chosen locally or by the Lucas County Engineer’s Office.
TARTA’s expansion will include the Toledo Area Regional Paratransit Service, its specialized service for people whose mobility limitations preclude their use of conventional fixed-route buses. Ms. Koprowski said the transit agency is still working out how that service might be provided in its expanded service area, noting that it could somehow be blended with Call-a-Ride in areas where no fixed-route buses operate.
The Toledo transit agency is the last among its Ohio peers to obtain a sales tax as its primary local subsidy. When TARTA was created in 1970, Ohio law allowed only property taxes for local transit funding.
But once the sales-tax option became available, it required a transit system to cover at least one entire county, and until this year, TARTA’s efforts to admit Lucas County as a member foundered because of its inability to persuade all of its exiting member jurisdictions’ councils or boards to support the plan.
The state biennial budget passed this year by the Ohio General Assembly and signed by Gov. Mike DeWine lowered the admission standard to a majority of those local legislative bodies rather than unanimous support.
Opponents questioned the necessity of a half-cent tax when a lesser amount would still have provided significantly more revenue than TARTA’s levies now generate while at the same time reducing the incentive for people contemplating major purchases, like home electronics or appliances, to favor merchants outside the transit district.
State Rep. Derek Merrin (R., Monclova Township) inserted 11th-hour language into an unrelated bill seeking to cap the TARTA sales tax at 0.3 percent unless all municipalities and townships in its district approved a higher amount, but the broader bill stalled over the summer in the legislature.
Sales-tax collection is slated to begin April 1, but TARTA would not receive any of the revenue until summer, said Andrew Cole, an authority spokesman. The two property taxes would concurrently cease, but the transit authority would receive the levy revenue for 2021’s second half during the first half of 2022, Mr. Cole said.
First Published November 3, 2021, 3:14 a.m.
