tax and spend and ride
The ever-agile monorail continues to survive the regular onslaught of efforts to prevent it from ever coming into existence. The latest hurdle in this multi-year obstacle course was a lawsuit which claimed that the special voter approved car-tab tax was “illegally levied, discriminatory, [and] ‘arbitrary’”. Yesterday, a county court found that the tax passed muster:
[Superior Court Judge William] Downing said the monorail agency was established under state law allowing it to impose taxes, once authorized by voters. “The challenged taxation was specifically and directly approved by the citizenry who would be paying it” [p-i]
There’s a lot of complicated language about deprication schedules that went way over my pedestrian head, but I think that the shorter story is that the monorail will live to see another day and probably another lawsuit.
This was a silly lawsuit. But the real test for the monorail will come soon. It has been over 230 days since the bid came in. As reported it was 200 million over budget. They are negotiating what to cut–stations, design, etc.
So, if the end result is a system that is single tracked, east german station design, not expandable,etc.–is it still worth building?