San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales voiced frustration that leaders from the county and
other cities don't "pay better respect" to San Jose.

Published Friday, December 2, 2005, in the San Jose Mercury News

Mercury News Editorial

Public needs time to digest transportation spending priorities

Supporters of bringing BART to Santa Clara County won a big victory
Thursday, although they didn't seem to realize it.

San Jose's delegates to the Valley Transportation Authority tried to
push through a new 30-year spending plan, even though VTA's staff had
only published the proposal at 5 p.m. Monday, and San Jose's City
Council had added key provisions as recently as Tuesday afternoon.
Delegates from the county and other cities did them a favor by forcing
a delay in the VTA vote.

Now the county supervisors, city councils and VTA's own advisory
boards will be able to discuss the plan -- in public -- before it goes
to a final vote. That's critical to winning public trust for a
document that will guide transportation development for decades.

Why was this a victory for BART? Because a new quarter-cent sales tax
will be needed to build it and many other transportation improvements
communities want. If the $11 billion plan had been railroaded through
on a split vote, the anger that rippled through the VTA board Thursday
morning would have spread among voters -- and the tax measure bound
for next fall's ballot would have been dead on arrival.

San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales voiced frustration that leaders from the
county and other cities don't "pay better respect" to San Jose's
hard work on transportation issues. Then, in the next breath, he
demonstrated why they don't. He all but called them slackers for being
unable to reach consensus on this plan, as San Jose had done.

In two days?

South County Supervisor Don Gage provided real leadership Thursday
morning, arguing calmly for the simple courtesy of allowing time for
people to understand and discuss the plan. More than Gonzales, Gage
seems to understand the need for buy-in if a new sales tax is to win a
two-thirds vote. That's especially true this time, since voters
approved a half-cent tax in 2000 that they thought would cover many of
the same projects.

Even Los Gatos Councilman Joe Pirzynski, the capable VTA chair and a
solid BART supporter, felt there were questions that needed answering
before he could vote on the spending plan. It's not clear, he pointed
out, just how San Jose's Tuesday additions dovetail with Monday's VTA
proposal.

Some of San Jose's ideas seem calculated to alienate other parts of
the county. For example, it would stipulate that if any additional
money becomes available, it should go toward expediting BART rather
than to other projects.

This might well be the wisest way to spend new money. BART is the
most important -- and most expensive -- project for the region. But
in the interest of winning consensus, does it make sense to shut off
any possibility that some other community's pet project might be
funded in the future?

Gonzales is right about one thing. Time is of the essence if a tax
measure is to go on next November's ballot. His February deadline for
a vote on the spending plan is reasonable.

A quick vote Thursday may have seemed reasonable to the mayor because
San Jose often makes decisions based on last-minute memos the public
has had little or no time to digest. It would have been doubly wrong
for the regional VTA to take that approach to a 30-year plan.