Transit Meeting in De Pere Tonight

From the Oshkosh Northwestern:

“Transportation Choices for the Fox Valley and Green Bay Area” will be the topic of a panel discussion in De Pere on Tuesday, March 9, 5:45-7:45 pm. The meeting will be held at the De Pere Kress Family Branch library, 333 N. Broadway [that's on the East side] and is open to anyone interested in transportation issues....

The meeting is sponsored by a coalition of individuals and organizations that want to increase mobility and transportation access in their communities, including the Sierra Club; the League of Women Voters of Winnebago County and Greater Green Bay, NEW North Sustainability Committee, Sustainable Green Bay, and ECOS Fox Valley.For more information contact Brad Sauer, Green Bay Transit Alliance, 920-544-7453, brad.sauer@savegreenbaymetro.com

Transit issues will become an even bigger part of the political landscape of NE Wisconsin as population growth results in reductions in federal and state funding.

This week also sees the consideration of transportation legislation before committee in Madison. The Fox Valley Initiative has issued a call to action over concerns that Regional Transit Authorities (RTA's) are given power, but lack the necessary accountability:

The current solution in Madison is to allow for the creation of a Regional Transit Authority, an unelected board that would have the power to condemn property and to enact up to a half percent sales tax. Once the RTA is enacted, the voters opportunities to hold this body accountable disappear. Now, there is some good in Assembly Bill 734 as it states that individual municipalities would have to adopt a resolution in support of joining the RTA which would then have to be ratified through a referendum of the voters. However, that just doesn’t go far enough. Any body politic that has the power of taxing authority must be directly accountable to the voters.

RTA's have been front and center in De Pere before. There was a time when concerns over transportation resulted in the threat of a large employer leaving the area, though the threat seemed to evaporate as soon as it was made.