With maintenance of Boulder’s roads and bridges being deferred due to current budgeting constraints, City Council on Tuesday supported exploring a new transportation fee charged to residents and businesses.

But Boulder County may seek voter approval this fall on a potential transportation and affordable housing sales tax. That could determine whether the city eventually implements a new fee.

The county is considering putting a tax Boulder Mayor Sam Weaver said could be substantial on this fall’s ballot, with officials polling residents’ support for either a property tax increase, a higher lodging tax, or sales taxes of 0.62 cents for every dollar spent or one cent for every dollar spent.

A third of the revenue generated by any of the new countywide taxes sent to the ballot and approved by voters would go toward affordable housing, with two-thirds put toward regional transportation, Weaver said. The transportation portion would likely include funding bus rapid transit services on the Diagonal Highway, South Boulder Road, Colo. 42, Colo. 7 and U.S. 287.

“They’re going to poll everything,” Weaver said. “My feedback was let’s make sure this is going to pass if we do it, because the worst thing we could do is put on (the ballot) something that is gong to fail and set us back multiple years. We don’t usually talk about sales tax increments that are that large.”

But the city also has more local desires. City staff has identified $23 million in unmet annual needs, $21 million in unmet one-time capital needs mainly for improving the city’s broadband network and traffic operations system and electrifying transit vehicles, and a $110 million investment to meet its “renewed vision for transit” goals identified in the 2019 update to the Transportation Master Plan.

The Regional Transportation District’s funding woes and the need for Boulder to compete with other jurisdictions in the district’s multi-county service area have led the city to examine what it would take to develop a more robust local transit system on its own.

“We’re facing a number of issues today,” Boulder Senior Transportation Planner Chris Hagelin said. “Sales tax is not keeping up with inflation, and we’re suffering from declining purchasing power. We’re currently deferring key maintenance on our roads and bridges. There is increased competition for funding sources at all levels, whether it’s the state or federal level. One of the more pressing issues is RTD is simply unable to provide the service that we need locally and regionally to meet our long term transportation and climate goals.”

Later this year, though, Council could have the results of a study it approved city staff to conduct that may guide the implementation of a new transportation revenue source: a fee that may appear as a new fee on utility bills for the city’s residents and businesses, for instance, that would vary depending on how many vehicle trips the utility customer’s property generated.

How it would be collected and whether the city may exempt, or offer rebates to, low-income users of the transportation system, are aspects yet to be determined if end up charging a new fee at all. Officials five years ago had the same discussion of a transportation mobility fee, Hagelin said, and are again looking at taking action.

A mobility fee and a county transportation tax were the two “tier one” funding strategies identified in last year’s city Transportation Master Plan update. Others included a local vehicle registration fee, curbside management pricing that could charge home delivery or ride share services for using public right-of-way and a tax on vehicle miles traveled.

Councilman Mark Wallach worried whether the county floating a new tax and the city pondering a mobility fee simultaneously would lead to the public hesitating to support one or either.

“Could one build resistance against the other?” Wallach asked. “… I’m a little concerned whether running them simultaneously or almost simultaneously will have that type of impact.”

The study of a mobility fee will involve economic analysis to determine justifiable amounts to charge transportation system users so the costs are fairly distributed; City Attorney Tom Carr expects it would remain valid to back up any future fee the Council implements following this November’s election, allowing the Council to hinge its decision on the outcome of the county’s potential tax, if the elected body so chooses.

“Certainly there are concerns about timing and the messages that are being sent to voters, about we have serious local needs, and there are also regional needs,” Hagelin said. “Having two things at once could be problematic for sure.”

Council will meet with a consultant in May, following city staff’s request for bids for the study, to scope the project and potentially discuss the city’s priorities for what the fee would fund, and could later determine how and whether it would be assessed. Hagelin estimated the study could take four to five months to complete.

Councilwoman Rachel Friend, while supporting the study, expressed concern with tucking a new charge into utility bills because it may open the door to the method being used more often for other public funding requests.