Prop 1 ballots due this Tuesday.

[Jeff Youngstrom]

Hi folks,

Tomorrow is the deadline to get your ballot in for King County Proposition 1.

Metro transit has been hard hit by the decline in sales tax revenue over the past few years. The state legislature has declined to either provide alternate funding sources or allow us to raise sales or property taxes to make up the difference, so the new car tab fee in Prop 1 is the source of last resort to prevent sweeping service cuts.

If Prop 1 does not pass, Issaquah will see the following changes in bus service starting as early as this September:

Delete Routes 200, 209, 210, 211X, 217, 271

Decrease Routes 208, 214

Info about the proposed cuts throughout the county is here: http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/future/proposed-changes.html

(note that route 271 is not deleted for all users, but it would no longer serve Issaquah so it would effectively be deleted for us.)

Note that the campaign against Prop 1 has used some extremely misleading language and reasoning. For more information about the reality behind their claims, one good source is the Seattle Transit Blog's coverage in this series of posts:

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/04/07/explainer-why-we-need-to-save-metro/

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/04/08/municipal-league-actually-supports-proposition-1/

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/04/08/in-favor-of-cost-cutting/

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/04/10/save-seattle-jobs-vote-for-prop-1/

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/04/14/yes-metros-deficit-is-real/

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/04/18/a-word-on-revenue-projections/

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/04/21/closing-argument-2/

Sorry for all those links, but it's all good stuff.

Thanks for your attention to this important issue!

Jeff