Since Clackamas County voters shot down a $5 annual motor vehicle registration fee, Multnomah County commissioners are forced to look for new options to replace the Sellwood Bridge.
Since Clackamas County voters shot down a $5 annual motor vehicle registration fee, Multnomah County commissioners are forced to look for new options to replace the Sellwood Bridge.
The vehicle fee would have added up to $22 million of the bridge’s $290 million budget.
“This was a tax revolt over what amounts to a penny and a half day,” Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen said Wednesday. “If people are not willing to make that little of an investment in making their community better and safer, it’s very sad. It means this project will either have to be put off or scaled down.”
Multnomah County enacted its own motor vehicle fee last year to cover about 44 percent of the bridge’s price tag. Residents now pay an additional $19 a year.
After a study updated in 2006 showed that 70 percent of Sellwood Bridge traffic starts or ends in Clackamas County, commissioners there unanimously supported a motor vehicle fee on their residents. Without it, they have said, they can’t help.
Read more at OregonLive.com.
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