The Proposition 1 sales and use tax ballot proposal for transportation improvements in Ocean Shores was not officially on the City Council’s agenda last week, but it was a timely topic of the July 23 meeting nonetheless.

That’s because there remains only days before the Aug. 7 measure is decided in the primary election, and opponents as well as proponents have had little time to debate or even discuss the issue in public.

Council member Jon Martin asked that the issue be added to the agenda as a resolution in favor of Proposition 1.

But he was told by Mayor Crystal Dingler that the timing already had expired to add a resolution, with a required need to inform any opposition of notice about such a proposal.

“You can speak in general terms … not as an item on your agenda, but in individual reports to council,” explained City Attorney Brent Dille.

“We’re too much up against the deadline to get that on the agenda,” the attorney said.

Martin then used his remarks during the Council’s public report to comment about Proposition 1: “We were hoping to bring forward a resolution that would hopefully clarify some issues that have been brought up.”

Several citizens raised concerns about the ballot measure, including Judy Hansey: “The taxpayers are being asked to pass this tax. I do not feel I have good understanding on where the money will be spent.”

She asked for a pavement management plan that would detail which roads would be repaired, including a timeline and account of what it would all cost. The city’s fact sheet states the “needs are estimated at $435,000 a year” to maintain and preserve the city’s 224 lane miles of pavement.

“To maintain and preserve is one thing. To fix and repair is quite another thing,” Hansey said, noting the property owners were assessed an LID fee for roads in the past decade.

“I would have thought that at that time maintenance would have been factored into the yearly budget,” Hansey said.

Saying she was speaking for a number of seniors on fixed incomes, Pam Tuttle questioned if the funds would be used for other things, such as sidewalks, bike lanes and improvements to Point Brown Avenue through the downtown area.

“The citizens should not have to give more money than the city already gets to maintain roads, which are normal functions of the city,” Tuttle said. “… The fact remains, we are still a city that has a lot of retirees with fixed incomes. And more raised in taxes just puts a bigger strain on their income.”

Martin acknowledged there had been a “lack of money on repairing the roads in the past,” which led to the nearly year-long discussions about forming the Transportation District and the two-tenths of 1 percent sales tax proposal on the ballot. When it was enacted, the Council made it clear that it did not want to adopt the other form of raising funds under the Transportation District — license tab fees for cars registered to owners in Ocean Shores.

The reason the sales tax was chosen, Martin noted, was because tourists as well as locals all pay the cost. “They help share the cost of repairing and maintaining our roads,” he said.

Money collected will be used “on the current roads,” Martin added.

Council member Bob Peterson said a key issue discussed by the Finance Committee was that past councils had failed to create a line item in the budget to pay for road maintenance.

“We did create a line item last year that put $100,000 into it, and then we put $300,000 in this year. So this council has been very active with that,” Peterson said.

He called the sales tax proposal the “easiest way to address probably the most pressing issue in the town that people talk about, which is the road deterioration. It was the easiest way to address it by having people from the outside help pay for it — tourists.”

No matter how people vote, “we have to pay for these roads somehow,” Peterson said.

Ballots for the election will be received until 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 7 at drop boxes. Mailed ballots must be postmarked on or before Aug. 7.

Drop boxes are at the YMCA of Grays Harbor, the County Courthouse in Montesano, the Ocean Shores Convention Center and city halls in Elma, Westport and Oakville.

City board openings

The city of Ocean Shores currently has vacancies on the Building Code Board of Appeals, the Parks Board, the Civil Service Commission and the Radio Board.