Take to social media to get your news and you’re sure to find any number of inane or oddball views of any situation in Central Oregon. This week, after the Oregon Department of Transportation announced that it would operate on a reduced snow-plowing schedule this winter due to budget shortfalls, the internet erupted in a cacophony of misguided ire. This is a safety issue, to be sure, but the reactions were fairly out of place.
Some blamed the City of Bend for the atrocity of being told that the road to Mt. Bachelor would be seeing less service this year.
How should a City, that doesn’t claim Mt. Bachelor within its borders, be responsible for addressing the very real problem — high on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – of having to deal with snow while going up to ski or ride in said snow?
Others lit into the City of Bend, thinking it atrocious that the City would even float the notion of a new $15-monthly transportation fee while also neglecting the poor skiers who would have to invest in snow tires, on top of all the expensive ski gear they’d purchased.
What seemed to be missing in the discussion on at least one social media thread, of course, is that ODOT is the agency tasked with plowing state roads all over the state, not the City of Bend nor any other city.
And perhaps more telling, few also seemed to have picked up on the fact (very clearly included in the press release, and in the reporting on the issue), that ODOT is seeing declining revenues because it continues to use an outdated funding mechanism to pay for the plows: gas taxes. While electric vehicles are not yet in the majority in Oregon, they’re having enough of an effect to cause state agencies tasked with transportation to see declining revenue. With Oregon’s leaders aiming to see at least 90% of vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emission by 2035, this is a looming problem.
It’s clear that ODOT and other agencies have to get serious about finding another way to pay for plowing and winter maintenance. Some of that plowing might be for voluntary ski traffic, but clear winter roads do help keep everyone safe throughout a long season.
One idea that’s been floated – and one Bend seems to be picking up on – is a flat fee for residents of a particular area, covering the costs that might otherwise be covered by gas taxes. This, of course, raises several concerns: One, that locals who drive gas vehicles will pay twice – once at the pump and twice with the fee. And two, it doesn’t account for the many tourists who use the roads, bringing RVs and boats and other large vehicles to town. Sure, those same people might be paying their own local fees to cover their own local roads, but as we’ve pointed out in earlier opinions, not every town is consistently ranked “Best Place to Visit” or “Best Resort Destination,” as Bend is.
So that’s the rub. Both ODOT and the City of Bend have figured that the funding mechanisms that have paid for maintenance in the past are not working anymore. In one instance, with ODOT, it means a kind of temporary pain in less-managed roads. With Bend, it means an ongoing type of pain in higher fees for City services.
As ODOT’s recent press release reads: “Options may include expanding ODOT’s pay-per-mile, or Road Usage Charge (RUC) program. Revenue could also be raised through registration or other vehicle fees, or the gap could be filled with funding from non-transportation sources. And while the gas tax won’t last forever, increasing or indexing it for inflation would help cover the cost of maintaining the system.”
Would a tax on tourists using our roads help? Sure – though as of yet, no grand ideas to tap the tourists have emerged. What you can be sure of however, is that any fee that is suggested to help this problem will result in the same kind of eruptions in public opinion that got us thinking about this in the first place. When it comes to road maintenance, it appears you are damned if you do tax and damned if you don’t.
This article appears in Source Weekly October 19, 2023.
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Mileage x Weight = Vehicle Roads Tax collected with registration (inspection required for mileage). 50% of Visit Bend’s revenue goes to roads (tourism benefits from efficient transportation).
Add a $20 to $25 per night fee to every hotel, motel and AirBnB stay in Deschutes, Jefferson and Crook County with the money staying in the tri-counties to do road maintenance. That level of fee will 1) allow for better road work to be done and 2) would not impact the rate of stays as the region has already reached a significant followers of out-of-area visitors. This fee would rarely be applied to local residents and truly get visitors to pay their fair share (most other tourist destinations in the US have a sales tax which helps fund local roads).
A use tax on studded snow tires would also help.