Measure M’s Approach to Traffic Woes

In a practical sense, there’s not one among us who cannot afford the half-penny sales tax in Measure M that would help finance the construction and installation of expanded freeways, better interchanges, transit systems and the myriad of other improvements dated to occur during implementation of the 20-year transportation improvement plan.

Not approving the half-penny to clean up the transportation mess that this county has gotten itself into simply means that conditions will become worse and worse, with all of the negative impacts heaping atop one another.

Obviously, we should have passed such a transportation sales tax measure much earlier. Have the politicians and the bureaucrats come up with the right solutions this time? Are the transportation improvements that are so carefully spelled out in the 16-page Sample Ballot Measure M description the right ones?

The answer is yes. This particular plan was written under the guidance of a 20-Year Master Plan Citizens Committee that represented all of Orange County. These same people, and many others, also insisted that a Citizens Oversight Committee should be mandated to watchdog the full 20-year transportation improvement process.

Will the dollars be shifted around at the pleasure of officials? Not a chance. Bucks can’t budge from the allocated slot for which planned unless you approve it by a separate vote. That’s keeping the control where it belongs--with the citizens.

Last June, California voters approved Propositions 108, 111 and 116 that fund a lot of transportation and transit improvements statewide. The urban counties that have passed “self-help” sales taxes will be the ones that get virtually all of the funds.

Of the major urban counties in California, Orange County is the only one to not have passed at least a half-penny tax. The other counties don’t really mind that much. San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties will split our funds among them if we let Measure M lose this time. While we wallow in our traffic woes, they’ll be laughing all the way down the widened freeways, or as they grab trolleys instead of the keys to their cars.

We owe our youngsters a decent place to become grown-ups. We also owe it to ourselves to do what we can, at extremely small individual cost, to make Measure M happen. It’s time to start fixing Orange County.

LELAND OLIVER, Santa Ana, Chairman, Orange County Chamber of Commerce