You drive? You pay

One of the more curious ideas the City of Dallas is considering to solve its budget problems is to convert all the city's streets into toll roads. That's right. Only this idea, referred to as a transportation user fee, is not nearly as fair or as equitable as the fees charged to drive up and down the North Dallas Tollway. For one thing, most of the population in the city wouldn't have to pay it, according to the way I read the plan, and those with multiple cars in their family would pay proportionately less than those with just one.

The idea behind the plan is that if you drive along the streets of Dallas, you should pay for their upkeep. The problem is we already do pay for their upkeep -- that's part of what the sales taxes and property taxes are supposed to be used for. But, unfortunately, the city simply can't increase the sales tax and the city council contains too many Tea Party-wannabees, including  Da Mayor, who will fight against a property tax increase that would be the logical way to go. So they will find yet another way to raise our taxes without calling it a tax increase.

According to what I've heard, this transportation user fee, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 to $4 a month, would be added to our "utility bills." Guess what? There is only one utility bill the city can attach such a fee to and that's the water bill. The problem is the majority of Dallas residents (and Dallas is a city unique in this regard) live in apartments where their water is included as part of their rent and thus don't receive an individual water bill. That means they don't have to pay (unless their slum landlords raise their rents to cover it, but I'm betting the Dallas Apartment Association will make sure that doesn't happen). It also seems grossly unfair to me that the Dallas retiree who only drives to the grocery store, to visit the doctor, or to a nearby mah jong tournament would have to pay the same $3 to $4 a month as a family where both parents work and their teenage children both have their own cars that are really ripping our avenues and parkways. And what about all those folks living in Plano, Duncanville, Garland, Mesquite, Irving, etc., who work in Dallas and come here every day and rip up our roads? Hey, how about those really rich fat cats living in the Park Cities that drive the city's streets? Will they be exempt?

There is a foul odor eminating from this user transportation fee. It has all the prospects of being the most unfair, unrepresentative tax since the imposition of the sales tax.