Despite a recommendation from an advisory panel and favorable poll numbers, Metro chief operating officer Martha Bennett said she's not yet ready to ask the Metro Council whether to put a natural areas levy on the May ballot.
Bennett said the recommendation from staff on the levy is unlikely to happen until after the November elections, so the council can take into account voter attitudes in other ballot measures.
Metro COO Martha Bennett
"We need the fall to talk about whether the voters are in a persuadable mood right now," Bennett said. "It wouldn't be good for anybody to go out and ask the voters for something that they didn't want to give us."
She said the council also needs to conduct more public outreach before it finalizes what exactly would be funded by the levy. Both traditional stakeholders, such as the Audubon Society, and traditionally underrepresented groups, such as minority organizations, need to be consulted, she said.
Metro has spent much of this year studying whether to ask the voters for a 5-year levy to pay for ongoing maintenance at its 16,000 acres of parks and natural areas, acquired after region-wide votes in 1995 and 2006. In June, Bennett convened the advisory committee to look into natural areas funding.
Committee members said Metro needs a long-term solution for its funding problem – levies can only last for five years before they have to be approved again by voters. But, its final report said, finding a long-term solution is challenging.
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Advisory committee members recommended Metro ask voters whether they want to pay a property tax levy of 10 to 12 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, raising between $10 million and $12 million annually for maintaining the natural areas. That amounts to $20 a year for the owner of a home with an assessed value of $200,000.
"In the realm of the size of levies people are going to ask for this is a relatively modest one," Bennett said. "I never want to say it's not very much money because that's not true. But this is not in the same order of magnitude of some of the other proposals."
Bennett said the Metro Council could take the issue up at any time, even before the November election. Conversely, the council could wait until 2013, when the seven-member body has three new members.
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