Lakeville on new tax: Show us the buses

The city is being pressed on several fronts to assess a transit tax but wants to make sure the benefits to residents are sustained.

By SARAH LEMAGIE, Star Tribune

Last update: March 29, 2008 - 10:42 PM

"We're looking at a chicken-and-egg thing."

That's how Rep. Shelley Madore, DFL-Apple Valley, describes the fight heating up between Lakeville and its neighbors over whether Lakeville residents should pay a tax that homeowners in most metro-area cities already pay.

Madore and many other south-metro leaders think it's only fair that Lakeville join the transit taxing district, but Lakeville officials have so far refused. So which come first: buses, or the taxes that help pay for them?

The debate, which has been bubbling for years, has new urgency this spring: The Metropolitan Council has said it won't build two new bus stations in Lakeville unless residents start paying the tax, and Madore introduced a measure in the Legislature that would force Lakeville and neighboring Farmington to join the taxing district.

The new bus stations -- which would be Lakeville's first -- are part of metro-wide plans for spending a $133 million federal grant to relieve traffic congestion. Most of the work, which includes express busways on Cedar Avenue and Interstate 35W, needs to be done by September 2009 to meet a grant deadline.

Project plans call for one park-and-ride on 35 at a weigh station south of County Road 46, and another on Cedar Avenue near 180th Street.

The tax would cost the typical homeowner in Lakeville about $40 a year, said Steve Mielke, Lakeville's city administrator.

Lakeville officials are reluctant to approve the tax partly because they're concerned that, even if the park-and-rides are built, funding won't be available to run enough buses from them. "Park-and-rides without buses don't do anybody any good," Mielke said.

Plans on 35W also include a toll lane from south Minneapolis to Burnsville, but that lane would end at Burnsville Parkway, so buses that get on the freeway in Lakeville "would be stuck in traffic with the cars," Mielke said.

Hundreds of Lakeville and Farmington commuters drive north every morning to board Minnesota Valley Transit Authority buses at crowded parking lots in Apple Valley and Burnsville, a daily migration that irks many residents who do pay the transit tax.

If Lakeville doesn't join the taxing district, the money set aside for the two park-and-rides might be used for other bus stations on 35W, Judd Schetnan, the Met Council's government affairs director, said at a legislative hearing this month.

Lakeville officials are taking a close look this spring at options for bus service in the community, and the city is negotiating with the Met Council to see if they can agree on a transit plan that would bring Lakeville into the taxing district, Mielke said.

The bottom line?

"Show us what our taxpayers can expect in terms of service before you expect us to join," he said.

Sarah Lemagie • 952-882-9016

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