Major transit tax measure on ballot for Bay Area voters

Welcome back, everybody. Well, a big measure facing Bay Area voters is a major transit tax that would fund BART, Muni, Caltrain, and other agencies. KTVU's Tom Vacar has been following that measure. He joins us live tonight with the latest on that part of the story. Tom. Well, there are actually two transit measures on the balance. One, you're talking about RTM, Regional Transit Measure. That is basically a sales tax. It adds a sales tax to five different counties, a half percent each to Alameda County, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara. San Francisco gets a one percent increase in tax. That will raise something about a billion dollars a year for the next 15 years. And it's the one that is going to... Have a significant impact on things like not just Muni, but all of the things that the transit system does within the city of San Francisco. Then you have the San Francisco thing itself, which is Proposition H. It's a parcel tax. It's for 15 years. And what it will do is it will... Tax people per year on the size of their parcel. Most homes would pay about $129 a year, and they would then have that put onto their tax bill, and it would disappear in about 14 years. Now, we did talk to some people about this, both pro and con, and here's what they had to say. This measure, we will see catastrophic transit service cuts across the Bay Area. You'll see 70% service cuts on BART. You'll see station closes at Caltrain. You'll see Muni have to cut service. And people will be stranded and our roads will become clogged with traffic. And so we need the regional transit measure to pass to stabilize public transit and then make sure people have an affordable, efficient, safe way to get around. Six reasons, and some are they don't need the money. They aren't worth the money. They don't deserve the money. We have better things to do with the money. Giving them the RTM tax removes any incentive for them to reform, and social justice is better served with reform and without this tax. Now, the question, of course, is are the voters going to go for this, given the situation with high prices, given the situations with a lot of taxes that people don't like, and given the fact that these taxes may raise in the future. And, of course, that only includes certain transit systems, not all the transit systems. So we'll see what the voters have to say. And we're going to start learning very, very soon. But there's a lot at stake here for many, many transit systems, both in San Francisco, the transit hub for the entire Bay Area, And, of course, in the surrounding counties, even not just the five that we're talking about, but all of them. That is the situation here. We'll be back at 10 o'clock to see what not only happened or is happening, but we'll also talk to a couple of people to get some reaction to where it is then. Tom Vacar, KTVU, Fox 2 News.