
{"id":24623,"date":"2012-03-22T10:25:37","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T14:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=24623"},"modified":"2012-03-21T17:08:31","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T21:08:31","slug":"county-talks-light-rail-cost-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2012\/03\/22\/county-talks-light-rail-cost-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"County talks light rail cost-sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Rose Laudicina<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Staff Writer<\/em> <\/p>\n<p>To keep moving forward with plans for a light rail system and expanded bus service between Orange County and Durham County, the Orange County Board of Commissioners first have to figure out how they want costs to be shared between the two counties. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The question right now is what is a fair and equitable distribution between Orange and Durham,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Commissioner Steve Yuhasz said. <\/p>\n<p>There are five cost-sharing options on the table, all of which were discussed with two Triangle Transit representatives at the commissioners\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 work session last Thursday. <\/p>\n<p>Options ranged from Orange County paying for just the number of stations located in the county, which is four out of 17, to the county paying for the amount of the 17.4 miles of track laid within county lines. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153From informal talks with Durham, we decided we want to have a cost-sharing principal that both parties could see as fair and was simple to explain,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d board Chair Bernadette Pelissier said. <\/p>\n<p>The cost-sharing proposal is part of the proposed Orange County Bus and Rail Investment Plan (OCBRIP), and would be the largest expense in the plan. <\/p>\n<p>Additional expenditures within the OCBRIP are expanded capital projects, such as new park-and-ride lots and a possible Amtrak train station in Hillsborough, new and expanded bus service and dedicated bus lanes along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. <\/p>\n<p>However, while the projects included in the OCBRIP would offer expanded transit options for the county, the question of how to pay for everything is still partially unknown. <\/p>\n<p>Orange County Planning Director Craig Benedict told commissioners that revenue used for the OCBRIP could come from a $7 vehicle tag tax, a $3 Triangle Transit fee and some rental car-tax and sales-tax revenue. <\/p>\n<p>An additional source of revenue, mentioned by Benedict and the board, could come from a half-cent sales tax, which could be put on the November ballot if approved by the commissioners.<\/p>\n<p>After discussing at length the five options, the commissioners favored option three, which proposes Orange County would pay approximately $316.2 million, with 50 percent of the cost coming from federal funding, 25 percent from the state and 25 percent \u00e2\u20ac\u201c $79.05 million \u00e2\u20ac\u201cfrom local funding. In this option, Durham County would pay approximately $1.06 billion, with $265.45 million coming from local funding. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Certainly, I would like to pay less and have them pay more,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Yuhasz said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If this is to go forward, I think we need to finally say this is an OK place and it might not be as good as I would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve liked \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but it is better than where I started.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>The board will vote today (Thursday) at their 7 p.m. meeting to approve the proposal for continued discussions with Durham. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To keep moving forward with plans for a light rail system and expanded bus service between Orange County and Durham County, the Orange County Board of Commissioners first have to figure out how they want costs to be shared between the two counties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24623"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24640,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24623\/revisions\/24640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}