By Brian Wright | Casa Grande Dispatch
Transportation improvements, funding and projects are important issues to Pinal County residents, and the Board of Supervisors took time Wednesday to tackle those topics.
Jim Dickey, executive director of the Arizona Transit Association, gave a presentation to the board and lobbied for more public transportation options in the county.
“We also try to advocate for enabling legislation — things to make it easier for you to implement public transportation programs,” he said. “That advocating role is the primary role of our association.”
Dickey said Pinal has issues not just with transit but also with its roads. He said improving those transportation factors would have a ripple effect that would improve property values, attract economic development and provide environmental, health and safety benefits.
Maintaining and growing current transportation programs, Dickey said, is an important step on the way to providing next- level transportation options.
“I always tell people, don’t expect to get more transit if the transit you have is not very good,” he said.
Pinal had zero public transportation until the establishment of the Central Arizona Regional Transit program in 2008, a bus service based in Coolidge. One of the biggest destinations for CART is Central Arizona College’s Signal Peak Campus, between Casa Grande and Coolidge.
But CAC has two new campuses in Maricopa and San Tan Valley, and the supervisors discussed the possible need for providing CART routes to those campuses.
Dickey sees tremendous growth potential in the county and said its geographic location between Phoenix and Tucson makes it the “growth target” in the state.
“It’s where most of the land is; it’s where most of the opportunity is,” he said.
Board Chairman Steve Miller said when this public transportation proposal was brought before the Casa Grande City Council and he was a council member, it decided not to participate.
“The biggest problem we had with it was the subsidizing of the program because there’s no way that federal funding covers all those costs, and there’s no guarantee that the federal funding continues,” he said. “And you’re always having to match and put funds into it.”
Miller said each individual municipality and county must assess its own needs for public transportation, and he said Pinal doesn’t have a huge demand for more services.
“I just don’t envision someone moving to Pinal County with the expectation that they’re going to have public transportation,” he said.
District 4 Supervisor Anthony Smith said transit will never pay for itself, but said it could provide benefits of improved air quality and the attraction of economic development.
“If you’re going to grow up and wear the big boy pants, you need to have transit,” he said.
On another topic of transportation, Pinal County had $6.1 million in transportation improvement and maintenance program funds in the current fiscal year, and each one of the county’s five districts received an uneven percentage of those funds. Public Works Director A.J. Blaha suggested the county disburse those funds not based on the population of each district but on project activity.
The funds are generated through the Pinal County transportation excise tax, a half-cent road tax approved by voters in 2005.
Because Wednesday’s meeting was a work session, no action was taken by the board, but the supervisors made it clear they want the transportation advisory committee increased to 10 members of the public.
District 1 Supervisor Pete Rios said citizen input is essential.
