Solution sought to Highway 101 widening

With stretches of the Highway 101 expansion project still underfunded, one Petaluma city official is hoping new revenue generated from an anticipated county sales tax measure could lead to the completion of highway widening from Petaluma to the county line.

If Sonoma County officials choose to put a sales tax measure on the November ballot, Petaluma City Councilmember Mike Healy said prioritizing funding for Highway 101 would be critical to the completion of the project.

Healy estimated that a county-wide quarter-cent sales tax measure would raise about $20 million per year. He said he believes the Highway 101 widening project could be completed from Petaluma to the county line if 25 percent of those new tax funds were earmarked for the project.

County officials are considering several options to raise funds to repair the county's 1,400 miles of roads, which have been rated some of the worst in the Bay Area. A proposal for a new sales tax or the extension of the county's existing Measure M transportation sales tax, passed in 2004 to widen Highway 101, are just two avenues being discussed for the November ballot. But the county could be limited in how much it seeks.

In addition to California's 7.5 percent general sales tax, city and county governments are allowed to implement additional sales taxes with voter approval, as long as the combined rate of the additional local taxes does not exceed 2 percent.

Currently, there are three county-wide quarter-cent sales taxes in place — the Measure M transportation sales tax; an open space district sales tax; and Measure Q, a Sonoma-Marin sales tax dedicated to funding the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit.

The City of Cotati is seeking a full penny sales tax measure on the June 3 ballot, and the cities of Sebastopol and Petaluma are expected to follow suit, putting half- or full-cent sales tax measures on the November ballot.

If passed, "that just leaves a quarter-cent of space for another county-wide tax," Healy said, explaining that without a guarantee that county sales tax dollars will go to widening 101, "there will be no local funding for 101 until one of the other taxes expires."

Currently, an estimated $109 million funding gap is halting the completion of the Highway 101 widening project from Petaluma to the county line, according to Supevisor David Rabbitt. While commuters regularly see construction crews at work along the highway, they are merely building frontage roads and interchanges in preparation for the eventual addition of new lanes that have yet to be funded.

"The work that you're seeing now is the grand finale of the Measure M funding," Healy said, "so when this preparatory work is done, Measure M is spent."

He explained that the county-wide sales tax dollars could be matched by state or federal funds, since Sonoma County is considered a self-help county because of the funding stream for roads created by Measure M. "If you're a self-help county, then that puts you in good stead with the California Transportation Commission for matching your local funds with funds they control," Healy said.

Leveraging state and federal funding is something the county has excelled in through taxes such as Measure M. Supervisor David Rabbitt said that's largely due to the work of Sonoma County Transportation Authority executive director Suzanne Smith, who he said always seeks ways for the county to leverage additional dollars.

Rabbitt said it was "unlikely" a quarter-cent sales tax could cover the $109 million funding gap as well as provide $6 to $10 million a year for the pavement preservation of nearly 1,400 miles of county roads.

Rabbit suggested that county and the city officials sit down and discuss "how both entities can achieve their goals."

(Contact Allison Jarrell at allison.jarrell@arguscourier.com)

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