The region's 0.12 percent construction tax pays for city and county planning efforts. For $200,000 of permitted construction, the tax is $240.
Several mayors voted Wednesday to endorse a six-year extension of the region's construction tax, which Metro uses to fund planning grants around the region.
At the 0.12 percent rate, the owner of a building permitted for $200,000 in improvements would pay $240 in taxes.
At Wednesday's meeting of the Metro Policy Advisory Committee, a unanimous group of four mayors, two city councilors, two county commissioners and four other MPAC members voted to tell the Metro Council that they support an extension.
The vote wasn't overly surprising – cities around the region rely on tax-funded grants to pay for planning projects, some of which support Metro's regional growth plan. For example, Beaverton was awarded $469,937 in the most recent grant cycle to plan the South Cooper Mountain area, Sherwood and Washington County split a $255,000 award to plan industrial land in the area, and Portland received a $380,759 grant to improve mixed use zoning in that city.
The tax was set to sunset at the end of this year if the Metro Council didn't extend it. Because of a change in state law, Metro couldn't re-institute the tax if it was allowed to expire.
But some questioned whether the temporary tax's third extension essentially meant that the tax wasn't going away.
Former Sherwood mayor Keith Mays, now Washington County's citizens representative to MPAC, recalled that leaders intended for the tax to sunset when it was first implemented.
"Is it safe to say that the second time the Metro Council renews it, that this is a tax that's just never going to go away because we're seeing the value benefit in the region?" Mays asked.
Metro chief operating officer Martha Bennett said she couldn't predict what the Metro Council might choose to do in the future. But, she said, some members of the development community wanted to make the tax permanent.
"The development community wanted to build this cost into their estimates of what these projects actually cost," Bennett said. "I do think the need for these (grants) will probably always exist.
One of the grant-funded projects was the advance planning work done on the Blue Heron mill site near Willamette Falls in Oregon City. That project got $300,000 in construction tax money to fund the planning.
That work drew the praise of Oregon City Mayor Doug Neeley – and from his counterpart from Forest Grove, Pete Truax.
"That's the poster child of this CET. That's not just something that benefits Oregon City, it's a region-wide beneficial program," Truax said. "If Forest Grove were to pay construction excise tax into the program and not get anything directly, we do get something when we get the preservation of natural resources such as Willamette Falls. Forest Grove has no complaints about that kind of distribution. It is hugely equitable on a qualitative basis around the region."
Truax moved to recommend an extension of the tax to 2020, which a little more commentary – including from Mays, who offered a qualifier to his vote in support of Truax' motion. He suggested making the tax permanent, with a decision in 2020 on how to allocate the money the tax generates.
"It's never going to go away, so tell the community to plan on it, and we'll just collectively decide how to re-shuffle the resources as time evolves," Mays said.
The Metro Council is scheduled to vote on whether to extend the tax on June 19.