In a 12-1 vote, the Cincinnati Metro board decided on Monday to put a tax increase on the ballot in 2020.

It’s a 0.8% sales tax which, if Hamilton County voters approve, will raise about $100 million a year for the bus system as well as $30 million a year for road and bridge improvements throughout the county.

If it passes, the tax will represent the largest investment in public transit in Hamilton County’s history.

"This has been years if not decades of work by a lot of folks to develop the system that the community deserves," said Metro board chair Kreg Keesee. "We're excited to get started on the next phase of the journey.”

Too often now, Keesee said, people use the bus only as a last resort if they can’t afford a car.

“We don’t want that to be the case in the future,” he said.

Metro has been talking about this tax for years, so there was little discussion ahead of Monday’s vote. Board member Allan Freeman was the lone dissenter. He said after the meeting that he voted against the tax because Metro has not yet completed its separation from the streetcar.

The resolution specifically states that no sales tax money would go toward the streetcar, but Freeman said he still thinks it could be an issue.

The board is targeting the March election, lining up with the presidential primary, though the resolution allows for either March or November 2020.

The final decision on timing will be made this November, Keesee said. He said the streetcar separation will happen hopefully by the end of this year but definitely “long before” the tax is on the ballot.

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If voters approve, the tax will mean new bus routes, including better crosstown service east to west across the city; more weekend and night service, including 24-hour service on some routes; and funding for Bus Rapid Transit, where buses travel a portion of a route in a bus-only lane.

Without any new funding, Metro is facing a $184 million deficit over the next decade. Ridership is already falling, and any cuts to stave off the deficit would likely exacerbate that cycle.

“As I ride the bus every day, I know firsthand how desperately we need change with our bus transportation system,” said Cam Hardy, president of the Better Bus Coalition. “We need bus service that reliably and efficiently gets people to work on time and serves their needs. We need buses that don’t break down. Bus riders have demanded change for years.”

The last time Cincinnati successfully passed a transit levy was in 1972, when city voters approved the 0.3% earnings tax that still today supports the bus system. If city voters approve a repeal this fall, that earnings tax will disappear as long as county voters approve the sales tax.

But that is unlikely to be an easy ask. In fact, countywide transit levies have failed every single time they were on the ballot in Hamilton County – in 1971, 1979, 1980 and most recently in 2002.

Prior to Monday’s vote, a group of city and county leaders held a press conference to show their support for the tax. Flanked by dozens of politicians, business owners and bus riders, Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber President and CEO Jill Meyer said the chamber is “all in on transportation.”

“We are working so hard because we hear from employers all the time that they have jobs to fill and they can’t get employees there to fill the jobs,” Meyer said. “We know that to build the city we aspire to be, we absolutely must have a robust transportation system, a properly funded bus system that connects people to jobs to education and to healthcare.”