Can Longmont keep its money til the trains come home?

By a 6-0 vote Tuesday, the council asked its legal staff to study whether Longmont can put its FasTracks sales tax funds into an escrow account until it gets the train service promised by the Regional Transportation District.

RTD voters approved the overall FasTracks rail system in 2004. But the Northwest Rail Line from Denver to Longmont has perennially been the most expensive and the last in line to be built.

The district’s most recent study — the Northwest Area Mobility Study — concluded that none of the $1.4 billion needed for the Northwest Line could be committed until 2040 at the earliest.

“We used to have ‘Rail won’t be here until 2042,'” city transportation planner Phil Greenwald told the council. “Then it was ‘Not until 2044.'”

“Now it’s never,” Mayor Dennis Coombs said with a sigh.

“They’re not saying it’s never,” Assistant City Manager Shawn Lewis said. “They’re simply saying they’re no longer able to project a date certain.”

Councilman Brian Bagley, meanwhile, was certain that he’d had enough. He said he was “sick of subsidizing Denver” and that RTD could not put its Longmont obligation on hold forever.

“The law doesn’t say that we’ll keep giving four cents (in sales tax) for every $10 and get nothing,” he said.

Councilwoman Sarah Levison warned that the city needed to be careful not to disrupt the partnerships that had been formed on another issue — the arterial bus service for Colo. 119 that has been held out as an interim step until rail arrives. The coalition has started to say that Longmont needs to be the priority for that service, Levison said, and it gives Longmont the ability to push effectively for its piece of the pie — but all that could get scattered if there’s a threat of legal action.

“If a bunch of buddies are standing behind you and two grizzly bears are in front of you, it doesn’t make sense to poke them with a stick,” Levison said.

“Our friends are not behind us,” Bagley said. “Our friends want our four cents. Big difference. My friends would be pushing for a train. When my friends and I go to lunch and they eat all the food, they pay the bill, not me.”

Councilman Jeff Moore said there was no reason the city couldn’t pursue both tracks, especially since the “bus rapid transit” option wasn’t planned to be funded with FasTracks dollars. Keep working with the partnership on the improved bus service for now, he said, but also study the city’s legal options for holding on to its FasTracks tax until a train is on the horizon again.

“We’re having two conversations,” Moore said.

Both of Moore’s tracks received 6-0 support from the council. The one absence was Councilman Gabe Santos — ironically, one of the biggest critics of how RTD has handled the FasTracks program.

“I just want to know if we have a leg to stand on,” Bagley said prior to the vote. “If we do, we’ll have a stick.”

Contact Times-Call staff writer Scott Rochat at 303-684-5220 or srochat@times-call.com