Majority of voters oppose FasTracks tax increase this year, poll indicates
Posted: 03/21/2011 10:31 PM
Conclusions of a recent poll assessing the chance of getting Denver-area voters this November to back a FasTracks sales-tax increase are emphatic: RTD shouldn't even try it.
"There is nothing in this data to suggest that a FasTracks sales-tax proposal has any opportunity to be successful on a 2011 ballot," The Tarrance Group wrote in a summary of its late-February poll of 600 registered voters who are especially "likely" to vote in odd-year elections.
Off-year electorates typically are smaller, older and more fiscally conservative than those voting in even election years, said Regional Transportation District political consultant Maria Garcia Berry.
In the Tarrance poll, respondents were asked whether they would vote "yes-in favor" or "no-against" a proposal to increase the RTD sales tax by 0.4 percentage points to raise $160 million annually for the FasTracks program.
Forty-three percent of those polled said they were in favor of such an increase, 53 percent were against and 4 percent were undecided, the survey found.
Such a response indicates RTD's prospects of winning a FasTracks tax increase are "fatally weak," the polling firm said.
The $6.7 billion FasTracks program, which includes six new train lines, is at least $2 billion short of what is needed to complete the project by the end of this decade.
RTD attributes the shortfall to lower-than-expected sales-tax revenues and higher-than-predicted construction costs.
In 2004, voters approved the original 0.4 percent FasTracks sales tax.
RTD directors had planned to decide this month whether to pursue the tax increase in this fall's election, but two weeks ago directors extended the timetable for making that decision until May 3.
When Tarrance tweaked the ballot question a bit, providing those polled with additional information that passage of the tax increase would allow completion of all FasTracks projects by 2019, support for the tax hike rose to 48 percent, while 49 percent were opposed, with 3 percent undecided.
Referring to the addition of the completion date, Tarrance added: "This key piece of information fails to generate the sort of ballot strength that would be necessary for viability."
Tarrance, based in Alexandria, Va., conducted the survey Feb. 22-23 for the Coalition for Smart Transit, which represents business, environmental and labor groups that have been strong backers of FasTracks. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Tarrance's findings seem to be at odds with a December poll on the proposed FasTracks tax increase conducted by The Kenney Group for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
Among a number of questions, the Kenney poll asked voters whether they would support a sales-tax increase of 0.4 percentage points to get all of FasTracks built by 2018. In response, 56 percent were "strongly" or "somewhat" in favor of such a measure, and 40 percent were strongly or somewhat opposed.
When the Kenney survey separately asked voters whether they support increasing the FasTracks sales tax by "4 pennies on a $10 purchase" — another way of defining an increase of 0.4 percentage points — to get the project completed by 2018, support for the measure increased a couple of points to 58 percent.
The Kenney poll was a phone survey of 500 active voters; the margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.38 percentage points.
David Kenney said his poll was about "what" FasTracks measure voters would support while Tarrance focused on "when" they might be amenable to a tax increase.
"The polls are not contradictory at all," Kenney said. "Taken in sum, they show people value FasTracks, they value mass transit and they think it's a good project. But they don't want to pay for it right now as we continue to recover from this recession."
The Tarrance survey summary put it another way: "Voters in the RTD do not express an overwhelming sense of urgency to complete all of the FasTracks projects as quickly as possible."
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or
jleib@denverpost.com