Colorado: Metro Mayors Caucus

The once-solid coalition of Denver metro-area mayors that unanimously promoted RTD's FasTracks tax five years ago is splintering into camps of potential winners and losers as they grapple with ways to close the project's $2.2 billion budget deficit.

At a FasTracks task force meeting of the Metro Mayors Caucus on Wednesday, Broomfield Mayor Pat Quinn said he cannot support the Regional Transportation District's pursuit of commuter-rail lines to Denver International Airport and Arvada/Wheat Ridge if doing so means the Northwest corridor line that will serve his community is relegated to a secondary position.

RTD is pushing forward the DIA train and Gold Line to Arvada/Wheat Ridge because it expects the two commuter lines will get $1 billion in federal money and a private consortium will build and operate them and bring another $1 billion to the project.

If a sales-tax increase is needed to bail out RTD's FasTracks program, some metro-area mayors want the new tax revenues to be dedicated to finishing train lines that are in danger of being truncated.

"If we want voters to pass this, it has to go into a separate bucket," Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer said at Monday's meeting of the Metro Mayors Caucus task force on FasTracks.

Voters also will need to know when the additional tax "sunsets," or ends, he said.

"I don't know if that will work, but without it we don't have a shot" at getting voters to support another FasTracks tax, Tauer said of his proposal to dedicate proceeds and identify when the tax will end.

If a sales-tax increase is needed to bail out RTD's FasTracks program, some metro-area mayors want the new tax revenues to be dedicated to finishing train lines that are in danger of being truncated.

"If we want voters to pass this, it has to go into a separate bucket," Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer said at Monday's meeting of the Metro Mayors Caucus task force on FasTracks.

Voters also will need to know when the additional tax "sunsets," or ends, he said.

"I don't know if that will work, but without it we don't have a shot" at getting voters to support another FasTracks tax, Tauer said of his proposal to dedicate proceeds and identify when the tax will end.