Good schools, public safety support and smooth roads all help make a community a desirable place to call home.
Cheney voters have strongly affirmed their support of schools recently with bond approval for new school construction. And more recently they said yes to the renewal of a levy that buys many of the nuts and bolts that help hold the educational system together.
By midnight next Tuesday, Aug. 7, city officials hope Cheney voters will have continued their support of tax measures that address both public safety and roads in the community.
With ballots in hand, and hopefully not lost in the pile of clutter so many of us have somewhere in our homes, Cheney residents will be asked to cast yes votes to renew two measures that promise to keep us safe, and sane.
A six-year EMS levy, constituting 25 percent of the budget for the Cheney Fire Department, will upgrade important medical equipment as well as add additional first responders. It should be a no-brainer at 50 cents per $1,000 in assessed property value.
A 14-year utility tax to support the residential street and sidewalk program would maintain miles of city streets. Both measures are renewals of existing taxes that expire this year.
Cheney Mayor Tom Trulove and Public Works director Todd Ableman made their pitch to the Cheney Free Press editorial board recently to get us behind these measures.
Their fear was, with both measures on the same ballot, voters might choose to support saving lives over smoother streets. While the former is certainly a higher priority, the latter has a serious “you can pay me now, or pay me much, much, much more later” scenario attached.
Ableman illustrated that fact noting the city recently spent $256 per linear foot to fully reconstruct a portion of North Eighth Street last year. An average street repair under the Residential Street and Sidewalk Program was about $50 per linear foot.
The first RSSP was approved by Cheney voters in 1999. Voters were promised 20 miles of repaired residential streets in exchange for a 14-year, 4 percent tax on their utility bills.
As the measure seeks renewal, residents got the vast majority of what they paid for, getting 18 of those nearly 20 miles fixed.
Based on current numbers, the average electricity bill in Cheney—about $61—would be taxed $2.46 each month, and the average $52 natural gas bill would be taxed $2.10 per month.
An additional bonus is this is truly an equitable way to get those who use the streets to pay for their upkeep. The RSSP is able to tap into one of the largest users of utilities in Cheney – Eastern Washington University – and in a roundabout way have its many student commuters contribute to street upkeep.
One area the monies would not – and could not – address are the accidental speed-bumps that have developed downtown along First St. where decorative paver bricks mark crosswalks. Since First is also SR 904, fixing those problems will have to wait for the Washington State Department of Transportation to allocate funds.
Cheney voters have to just look back a few years to one of the times they chose not to support basic funding for parks and among the things that resulted were acres of brown grass that had to have much more money pumped into them.
As the saying goes, it is expensive to be cheap. We hope Cheney voters remember that with a yes vote for streets.
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