As you might have suspected, my ballot went into the mail not too long after I received it. I don’t think I have to tell you what candidates I voted for, do I? OK, that’s settled.
Being a resident of Centralia I did not see the wording on the ballot regarding the expansion of bus service in Lewis County areas outside the cities of Centralia, Chehalis and Napavine.
Monday morning I went to the Auditor’s Office to find out how the issue was worded. I think there’s been some confusion on the matter. Without paying too much attention to the wording, many voters seem to believe that they are voting on an expansion of Twin Transit, but that’s not the case. The boundary of Twin Transit was established at its beginning and consists of the city limits of Chehalis and Centralia and also any county land which lies between those two cities.
What you’re voting on is an expansion of Lewis Public Transit Benefit Area (or LPTBA in any future reference). LPTBA has operated in Lewis County for a number of years. If passed, the new revenue source will be a portion of the sales tax (two tenths of one percent) from businesses in the county, but only those areas outside the city limits of Chehalis, Centralia and Napavine.
Will that be enough to replace the vanishing money from the established Lewis Mountain Highway Transit system in the eastern part of our county and also create new routes in the west? That’s something that time, and time only, will determine. If the matter passes next Tuesday, of course. If it passes, I realistically wouldn’t expect any new service immediately in the western part of the county other than the Twin Cities, but residents there have always been doing without it.
At least Twin Transit won’t have to go through all the starting pains it faced in its beginning. trying to keep “$500-or-cheaper” buses running with no place to do any work on them except hard ground. I’ve gone over those trials and tribulations in previous columns so I won’t repeat them here except to say that, if you email me at the address at the bottom of this column, I could fill a half page or more in my reply
But all of the questions that arise will be settled if the issue does not pass, and frankly, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see it fail. People living a rural lifestyle tend to be self supporting, generally vote a conservative ticket, and regard the word “tax” as if it were just another naughty word. That leaves me with one parting thought; since Centralia and Chehalis have both extended their boundaries to the point where there is no county land left between them, why is there still a county representative on Twin Transit’s board? Mentioning no names, but it’s my impression that most of the grandiose plans in recent years have come from that source. In its beginning, Twin Transit’s emphasis was providing hometown service to the community, not building an empire.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
