At tonight’s meeting of the Oakland County Commission, a great deal of time and debate focused on SMART transit.
Unfortunately Commissioner Schwartz failed in his effort to force a vote on making the SMART millage and service countywide. The decision went down on purely party lines.
The Commission voted instead to maintain the status quo – putting the existing .59 mil property tax on the ballot in existing opt-in communities to maintain SMART service for the next two years. Commissioner Schwartz and other transit champs fought to keep it to two years with the hope that within that time we’ll have a regional authority and funding or that we can try again for countywide in the next year or two, instead of waiting for four years.
The next key steps on SMART are to make sure every current opt-in community puts it on next year’s ballot (for August 2010). While that sounds a long way off, the decisions have to be made by each city or township government very soon!
Stay tuned!