Starting tomorrow, Eugene’s gas tax will come down to 3 cents per gallon – the same as Springfield’s and Veneta’s – thanks to a group of petitioners and gas station owners.
The Eugene tax has stayed at 5 cents per gallon since 2005, but a petition with 11,084 signatures filed Wednesday brought it back down and ultimately will force the issue to a public vote.
The referendum effort is only the latest move in a long duel between the city council and local gas station owners backed by the Oregon Petroleum Association.
City councilors tried to bypass local opinion concerning Eugene’s gas tax rates late last year, but petitioners have been gathering signatures for a referendum that would ultimately let voters decide whether the city will charge a 5-cent or 3-cent-per-gallon gas tax.
Local gas station owners worked with OPA to force a vote on the city’s gas tax because they feel Eugene’s tax – the highest in the state – puts local gas station owners on the losing side of an uneven playing field.
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University student Alex Zerzan, who was filling up his gas tank at a local 76 station, said he lives in Eugene but would definitely drive to Springfield to fill up if he could save 2 cents per gallon on gas.
Petitioners have had a month to gather the required 6,365 valid signatures to possibly put the tax on the May 20 ballot, and they far exceeded that number, OPA lawyer Paul Romain said.
County officials received the petitions from the city and are checking the number of signatures to make sure petitioners reached the requirement. Some signatures may be thrown out if found to be invalid, reducing the overall number.
“We believe a good portion are valid, and we don’t think there are any that should be disqualified,” Roman said.
Eugene uses its 5-cent-per-gallon gas tax to fund public projects such as filling potholes, overlaying streets and putting Band-Aid type patches on streets known as slurry seals. The city filled 3,500 to 5,000 potholes in 2007 with the money from local and state gas taxes, said Eric Jones, a spokesman for Eugene’s Public Works department.
The 5-cent tax brings in about $3.4 million for road repair and maintenance, only a drop in the bucket compared to the $170 million backlog of road repair needs the city currently faces. To stop the backlog growing to an estimated $280 million in 10 years, the city needs to bring in $18 million a year in revenue dedicated to street repair, Jones said.
Each penny of gas tax garners about $700,000 a year, making the 2 cent-per-gallon tax a $1.4 million per year earner for the city, Jones said.
In 2005 the city added 2 cents to the tax, bringing it to the current total of 5 cents per gallon. The 2-cent increase was originally set to expire Feb. 29, 2008. Late last year city councilors decided against rescinding the 2-cent tax, even though petitioners had gathered enough signatures to challenge their decision.
“They were tricking us,” said Ron Tyree, a referendum leader and owner of Eugene-based Tyree Oil. “There were saying, ‘We’ll try and sneak it in on the public before February 2008.’”
Gas station owners were already upset at another proposed 3-cent increase, which would have brought the city’s tax to 8 cents per gallon. Voters overwhelmingly defeated that measure in November.
Tyree said he supports gas taxes being used for street repair because “it only makes sense,” but it is the unfair high tax that Eugene imposes that makes a local gas tax unappealing. His solution, one shared by the OPA and a number of other statewide transportation groups, is to increase the state’s gas tax. Currently Oregon has a 24-cent-per-gallon tax, but supporters of the statewide tax want to increase that amount by an additional 14 cents per gallon, which would bring Oregon to the same level as Washington.
While the statewide gas tax increase may provide a solution to the business disadvantage local gas station owners face, the plausibility of such an increase has gained a number of critics.
“The last statewide increase happened in 1993, so I am rightfully skeptical that they could even pull this off,” said City Councilor Alan Zelenka. “That’s a pretty big yarn to spin.”
A statewide increase would have to wait until the 2009 legislature convenes to get a hearing, but opponents of keeping the extra 2 cents are adamant they can get a measure passed and increase the state’s fuel tax. But if the measure does go to the next ballot, that will be almost a full year of the lost revenues for the city should the measure fail.
Zelenka said the failure of the measure would have negative effects on the city’s road problems.
“People need to be very clear that we are going backwards in fixing potholes … going backwards from where we are right now only puts us in an even bigger hole,” he said.
County elections officials have until March 13 to finish checking the validity of the 10,937 petition signatures they received from city officials, and if the 6,365 quota is met, the issue will possibly make it to the May 20 ballot, but it might be on the Sept. 19 ballot.
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