If you look closely, you’ll see this rundown of gas taxes every time you fill up in Albany.
Every time we fill up our cars in Albany, the required signage on the pump reminds us that there’s no local gas tax yet. But the amount we pay for transportation is sure to rise. How much depends on what the city council, the local voters, and probably the legislature decide.
Once again, the Albany City Council spent a lot of time Monday listening to consultants go on about the ins and outs of transportation funding. They talked about the work they’ve done to prepare for a local street maintenance tax or fee, and about focus groups and opinion polling they’ve conducted on a possible local gas tax.
No specific proposals for either the fee or the gas tax have yet appeared. That will come later.
If the council wants to put a local gas tax on the ballot this fall, the decision on the proposed amount and ballot title has to be made by July. An election is required under current law.
Two Portland area Democrats, Sen. Khan Pham and Rep. Mark Gamba, introduced Senate Bill 687 in the current Oregon legislature to allow cities and counties to enact local fuel taxes on their own, without the voters’ say-so. As of Monday the bill appeared to be stalled, stuck in the Senate revenue committee.
But don’t worry, the legislature’s Democratic supermajority has other tax hikes in mind for transportation.
House Bill 2157 is a package of 10 increased or new taxes, including a 20-cent boost over six years that would hike the state fuel tax to 60 cents a gallon. With that and the other tax increases in the offing, you’d think that an Albany ballot measure imposing a local gas tax is dead in the water. (Especially if the price of gas stays at or above $4, as it was at many Albany startions this weekend.)
As for the local street maintenance tax, it requires only council approval before it is added to everybody’s monthly city water bill. The consultants working on this showed the council a bewildering array of considerations to try to make the fee fair for everybody.
The council has already authorized a local street maintenance fee. All that remains is to determine the rates and set a starting date.
What with the pending action at the state Capitol and at City Hall, Albany residents and motorists should expect to pay considerably more for streets and roads starting in 2026. (hh)
Sweet.
You didn’t actually think taxes and the costs of goods sold would go down, did you? On the upside, the way things are going with the Orange God-King and his tariffs, if you once had a 401-K, it’ll be gone soon enough.
So, EXACTLY, what do you love about the Democrats?
So what exactly do you love about Trump?
He’s anti communist. Too bad you’re to cowardly to use your name and too ignorant to matter.
Democrats try to govern
Republicans sabotage
Nobody said boo about Democrats. I would say that since my 401K has lost about 8% in value over the past 5-days that it wasn’t the Democrats that caused this downturn. Quit trying to blame the Dems when we all know there’s just one idiot with one bad idea and that one idiot has screwed the pooch for the globe. Great job, Donnie.
I suspect Trump’s ill-conceived tariffs will have a far greater impact. But of course, Hasso won’t say a word about that. That would require a certain amount of…..HONESTY.
IMO… Albany doesn’t have a local economy to sustain a $340M local budget (not counting county and schools) without the subsidy of the federal government, and a strong equities market to offset accrued staff liabilities, it’s a problem. If this equities market continues into bear market territory, we’re going to have a substantial unfunded PERS liability, go take a look at the 13F for the PERS portfolio, it holds the equities that are being hit the hardest and are most susceptible to tariff retaliation, assuming the fund managers haven’t sold and taken the hit. 30% of their holdings are in the hardest hit sectors, someone is going to have to cover this if we continue down this path, which seems likely for the next four years, no idea how you end a trade war once it starts, we all know the solution to Smoot-Hawley… no thanks. City is currently acting like an annuity that produces unlimited gains and a guaranteed return when losses occur, only in the public sector with the power to tax could this scenario exist. These markets may pop back, but if anything, this recent policy tells us how volatile these securities really are and the peril of following the herd.
https://fintel.io/i/oregon-public-employees-retirement-fund
Also Fed doesn’t seem to be all that interested in saving the market this time around, more willing to allow a correction to a level they believe is more appropriate to combat inflation, they have a hard target of 2% and are not budging.
Right now, we have local leadership that appears to be “hoping” that it will somehow work itself out, full speed ahead with more taxes and fees, adding additional liabilities on the back of the local resident to pay for services that are in some instances so complex it’s difficult to define or create a tangible metric as to the benefit of the public. Do we just continue to take from the retired/fixed income person until they can no longer afford the taxes and fees to stay in their homes? Redistribute their homes to the out-of-town investors/hedge funds that are buying up most of the community? It’s not local money that’s doing most of this high density, stacked boxes, development. That seemed to be somewhat of the theme the consultants were pointing out, they commented multiple times about the disconnect between the resident and the comprehension of city government finances, the resident is illiterate was the message, “they just don’t understand”. But then they used Lake Oswego as a comparable for tax policy, I guess we need a few more NBA players to move into town. Let’s not sugar coat this, we’re going to force people out of their homes, many can’t sustain a 50% increase in property taxes, bonds, and levies over a very short period of time, just because a certain sector learns how to game the system, figure out a way around the limitations of M5 and M50 doesn’t mean we should, even with the maximum safeguard against Real Market Value, RMV is as volatile as any equity, compression can happen very quickly.
As pointed out by HH recently, the Holy Grail is creating a revenue source that doesn’t impact the local resident, looking around, what industries do we have that fit this narrative? We’re doing exactly the opposite, we keep adding additional liabilities on the back of the current resident through the most basic of subsistence needs… shelter AND then have presentations about how we also need housing that doesn’t pay for the services it uses. It’s a horrible policy, destroying the mid and lower income resident that’s putting in the effort, whatever disposable income they may have had in the past for any type of quality of life has virtually vanished. Lately, I watch these CC meetings, they spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to reduce the number of meetings, our representatives need to spend time working through this economic policy as distasteful as it is, they should have dozens of questions during “Business from the Council”, now is not the time to be meek. It’s not a fun subject and it’s time-consuming, but putting our head in the sand and hoping it just goes away or someone else will fix it, is the least desirable action we can take. The budget meetings are coming up and we’re going to hear a lot about how we must spend whatever liabilities are proposed, no choice, perhaps the council should spend a few dollars and have an outside third-party consultant go through the budget and have a different set of eyes look at it, an executive/legislative, neutral, oversite consultant. What are the nice to haves and what are the must haves?
Lots of questions. In this current climate, what local industry creates revenue that’s not dependent on the resident and how much is that? Do we have any idea how our local metals or mill industry will be impacted by tariffs? Where is our weakness identified? Need to start establishing some baselines to find out globally where the local economy stands. I wish our situation was different and it’s not like we are alone, but being in the same situation as other Oregon communities doesn’t create much solace. The worst thing is going to a leadership meeting, and it’s announced we have a $10M deficit in our budget (or the GAPS situation where they are saying they are spending $4M more a year than they are receiving, using up their reserves) and everyone looks at each other in shock. The old saying politics is local.
…”many can’t sustain a 50% increase in property taxes, bonds, and levies over a very short period of time, just because a certain sector learns how to game the system,”'”
Ok, interesting screed. But you clearly don’t understand how city revenues work. State law constrains any local increases in property taxes SEVERELY. Existing property cannot be increased more than 3% per year – here is the info:
The passage of Measure 50 in May 1997 brought about major changes to Oregon’s
property tax system. With Measure 50 now fully in place, this report outlines the current
property tax system. The new system contains the following key elements:
… Oregon’s property tax is largely a tax rate system
… Each district has a permanent property tax rate established in Measure 50
… Assessed value growth is limited to 3% a year – with a few exceptions
… Voters may approve temporary taxes outside the permanent rates
…Taxes on any individual property may not exceed Measure 5 tax limits of $5 per
$1000 of real market value for schools and $10 per $1000 for non schools
… Voter-approved bonds may exceed the Measure 5 limits, but other temporary levies
may not
… New property tax levies may only be approved at a general election with at least half
of the registered voters eligible to vote
https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/lro/Documents/report%206-99.pdf
Next time, do some research before you pretty much get everything wrong.
Thank you Bob for clarifying, I apologize for my shortcomings. It’s always a positive when a former staff member takes the time to educate us. In the future, I will study harder.
What both you and Woods conveniently omitted is an additional 27% of Pers employee earnings is going to the Pers pension plan which is grossly under water due to the 8% money match the unions dreamt up. There is an article on Oregonlive.com which shows an employee with money match plan worked 14 years with a high salary of $31,000 starting in 1985 and left her money in the plan and her first check was $21,000 a month!! I’m sure Woods will tell you no fraud was involved but if this was private pension plan the directors would be in jail.
And what Al doesn’t tell you, and everyone else, is that the Oregonian article also says that over 22 years ago the system was revised to stop that from happening.
“State officials say the money match formula has been losing steam since 2003, when lawmakers made reforms to stanch the princely pensions and runaway liability growth it created. Public workers hired after August 2003 aren’t eligible. And benefits for most employees hired between January 1996 and August 2003 are typically more generous under a different retirement calculation that is based on final pay and years of service.
An analysis of nearly 6,000 retirees who started collecting benefits last year shows that only 13% were calculated under the money match formula. Their annual benefits from money match, on average, amounted to $32,632.”
So Al, omitting pertinent information like like that is just creating a lie. Something you love to do.
Can you explain the structural problem where annual city revenue growth lags behind growth in expenditures by about 3%? I think that’s mostly driven by inflation, pension obligations, and other post-employment benefits. That doesn’t even take into account the city’s unfunded liabilities. The city can’t tax its way to sustainable fiscal health. As an aside, I was thinking about how much the city pays for consulting services. Seems like we have plenty of qualified staff on our the payroll.
But..but..but …. what about these EVs clogging our pot-holed streets?
ill conceived tariffs. typical leftist- wont even give it a chance to pan out. trump is telling u.s. all about his plan. hidin’ biden didnt tell us anything about his plan. other than inflation was temporary and if we get the shot we wont get china virus. biden telling u.s. the truth about all that would require a certain amount of…..HONESTY
why would we give this catastrophic economic policy time to pan out? I don’t need my 401K to be broke inside of 6-months if … a VERY BIG IF … the Orange God King’s tariff plan succeeds in the 4-5 years it will take to bring manufacturing back to the US.
Don’t tell me to be patient. The government created 401K plans so that business would no longer offer fixed pension plans. Now, the government’s (orange god king) plan is to destroy the value of equities for no real reason, defenestrating 401K funds worldwide.
The orange god king has his Wharton School of Economics stuffed-up his you-know-what and we are being force fed his misguided thoughtlessness. Bring back Smoot-Hawley is not the answer.
The Wall Street Journal and The Economist are both dead set against Trump’s tariffs.
It’ll take years to get those factories built. They will be heavily automated, so the jobs won’t be that many. The factories that are built will be in low wage, non-union, southern states, so the jobs won’t be that desirable.
Given Trump’s frequent changes of mind, what company will invest millions to build factories when he could suddenly revoke them?
“typical leftist- wont even give it a chance to pan out.”
Trump folded on his tariffs today. He saw the bond markets stinking and realized he made a mistake, leading one to conclude that he didn’t “even give it a chance to pan out.”
Several trillion of dollars lost, and a mountain of chaos due to his “ill-conceived” plan.
Gee… I guess the emergency wasn’t really an emergency. So that must mean that he doesn’t really care about bringing manufacturing jobs back and that he lied through his teeth for his entire campaign.
Feel taken yet Trump voters?
He just made every one of you look like fools.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
International financial turmoil, created by the Orange Menace.
Read a little history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
im happy with giving trumps plans a chance to pan out :) chaos in america right now is the left trying to figure out who there leader is
hasso- its amazing how many folks on this blog think they know more about money than donald trump and elon. absolutely amazing.
hasso- im laughin’ out loud at the complainers. the whiners. the left has no leader! so they gotta complain about ours. imagine if they spent there time and effort on leadership :)