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The town of Matthews isn’t going quietly in its fight to keep the Silver Line light rail.
To counter the city of Charlotte and the rest of Mecklenburg County — who want to run a bus rapid transit line to Matthews instead of a train — Matthews has hired lobbyist Andy Munn of Raleigh-based EQV Strategic. The town is paying Munn $60,000 to lobby Republican lawmakers, who are crucial for Charlotte’s multibillion-dollar transit plan to move forward.
Funding the transit plan starts with the General Assembly, which must vote to give Charlotte the ability to place a one-cent sales tax increase on the ballot.
The problem for Matthews is the proposed split for spending the new tax money, which was revised to please Republican lawmakers. The plan now calls for no more than 40% of tax revenue for rail transit, at least 40% for roads and 20% for buses.
With the amount of money for trains reduced, Charlotte has said it doesn’t have enough money to build the Red Line commuter rail line to Lake Norman (the highest priority) as well as the Silver Line east from uptown to Matthews.
(An internal Charlotte document from the spring showed that the gap isn’t actually that large. A financial consultant showed the Charlotte Area Transit System could build both if it dedicated 44% of the sales tax revenue for trains. That would call for other tradeoffs, though, like reducing plans for the Silver Line west to the airport.)
Munn worked for former Republican House Speakers Tim Moore and Thom Tillis when they were in the legislature. Matthews Mayor John Higdon said the town hired Munn to lobby for all Matthews issues, not just transit. But when you look at the timing of the hire, however, the link between Munn and the transit plan is undeniable.
Said Higdon: “I urge fair-minded Mecklenburg County voters to reject any tax proposal that does not include building some or all of Silver Line East as light rail.”
The General Assembly’s long session began last week.
Charlotte has lost one of its potential allies to advance the transportation plan: north Mecklenburg Republican House member John Bradford, who lost the Republican primary in March for a congressional seat.
The city will likely rely on Iredell state Sen. Vickie Sawyer, a Republican, and Republican state House member Tricia Cotham.
Sawyer said last month she’s not ready to talk about the transit plan because “we are still formulating a plan to move forward in the General Assembly.”
Transportation plan to … lower crime?
Speaking of the transportation plan, Charlotte City Manager Marcus Jones last Monday linked the one-cent sales tax to improving public safety in the wake of one of Charlotte’s most violent years on record.
City staff gave a presentation to City Council members last week about their plan to improve public safety through a “holistic” approach that, in part, focuses on “quality of life” issues. City officials talked about things like having brighter LED streetlights, clearing debris-filled empty lots, stopping street racing and cleaning up graffiti.
Jones pointed out that some of those could be funded by the transit tax.
“The things that seem to excite you tonight, a funding source is within the one-cent sales tax,” he said.
To be sure, the tax would give Charlotte money for new streetlights. But it’s hard to see how other things — sidewalks, bike lanes, more roads, more buses — would lower the crime rate.
