Portland transportation officials want to renew a 10-cent-per-gallon gas tax approved by voters in 2016.

Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who oversees the transportation bureau, said last year that she would send the gas tax back to voters this May. The City Council will be briefed on the plan Feb. 6 and decide whether to refer the tax to the ballot on the same day.

The likely referral means Portland voters will have two transportation funding packages on their ballot this year. Metro plans to send a region-wide transportation package to voters in November. A gas tax is not expected to be one of the funding mechanisms included in its $7 billion package (which would raise $4.22 billion locally for projects and programs and leverage those projects to bring in $2.2 billion from federal and state sources).

When it pitched the gas tax to voters in 2016, Portland proposed $64 million worth of projects, but gas tax revenue outpaced initial estimates. The 10-cent tax was approved by 52 percent of Portland voters in 2016, and it came on the heels of a protracted street funding discussion launched by then-Mayor Charlie Hales and then City Commissioner Steve Novick. The city has since branded its gas tax campaign “Fixing our Streets.”

“We have spent the last few months talking with leading Portland organizations, advocates and committees as we developed our project list,” Hannah Schafer, a city transportation spokeswoman said in a statement. “The new Fixing Our Streets list includes $74.5 million in street repair and traffic safety projects and services.”

According to city documents, Portland estimates a $13 million gas tax surplus by the end of the current year.

City Council will hear a progress report Feb. 6 on the current tax, and there is still much work to finish by the end of 2020. Schafer said the city expected to complete all of the dozens of projects still unfinished – from safety projects on Southeast Division street to paving a swatch of Southwest Naito Parkway to paving on Northeast Alberta – in 2020.

According to a 2019 city audit, the transportation bureau had failed to provide annual audits or updates to City Council on the gas tax and provided “incomplete, inconsistent, and outdated” information to a citizen group tasked with monitoring the projects.

Auditors found the city’s progress on the tax was a mixed bag. The watchdogs said there were considerable delays in getting some projects out the door, and confusion on how much of the gas tax was being spent on paving or maintenance work versus safety projects.

Schafer said the transportation bureau heard those critiques. “A lot of the things that we saw in the audit we took very much to heart,” she said.

The new four-year spending plan includes $25 million for paving, $5 million for new traffic signals, $4.5 million for sidewalks, and $4.5 million for street lighting. The remainder includes a variety of safety projects citywide and near schools.

The city briefed the citizen task force charged with overseeing projects this month. According to documents presented to that committee, a draft project list could include paving a lengthy stretch of Northeast Killingsworth, Southeast 122nd Avenue and Southeast 45th Avenue in some stretches.

Portland said it won endorsements from several business and nonprofit advocacy groups to move forward with the gas tax proposal, citing 1000 Friends of Oregon, The Street Trust and Rosewood Initiative, among others.

The city council will also decide whether to renew the Heavy Vehicle Use Tax, which charges trucks an additional tax for their activity in the city. The Feb. 6 meeting is just a first reading on that ordinance and that measure doesn’t go to voters for approval.

-- Andrew Theen; atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen

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