The Transportation Riders United is a political action group which supports property tax increases and expansion of the failed SMART bus system.   If this was the only support the Planning Director for the City of Birmingham can provide to Birmingham residents, I was quite concerned that this "transit center" and the forced expansion of the SMART bus tax to all of Oakland County's 61 communities is being backed for political purposes.

With this in mind, I attended the "Transit Now" meeting [agenda attached]   It was even worse than I thought.  In addition to TRU, the forum was sponsored by MOSES, a community agitation ACORN-like group associated with the GAMALIEL Foundation for whom Obama once worked as an "organizer."

County Commission Dave Potts was a featured speaker as he and Steven H. Schwartz are the sponsors of the countywide SMART bus millage proposal for the August 2010 primary ballot that will force the expansion of the SMART bus tax to all of Oakland County's 61 communities - including the current "opt-out" communities. Currently only 21 communities are "opt-in" communities who pay the bus tax.  Notably, this bus tax was already increased in August 2002 to 0.60 mill because of the inefficiency of the SMART bus system.

The Potts and Schwartz proposal will further increase the bus tax for the opt-in communities yet again to approximately 0.75 mill as well as force the 40 other opt-out communities such as West Bloomfield Township and Novi into the bus system, force the building of numerous bus stops within these communities and, of course, increase their SMART bus tax from 0 to 0.75 mills.

Forcing property owners in communities that don't have a constituency for transit service to pay a millage is unjust.  If a countywide SMART millage proposal is placed on the 2010 primary election ballot, a low voter turnout is expected to be biased by community agitation groups such as the GAMALIEL Foundation, MOSES, and TRU to force all county property owners into paying a tax that neither they nor their community support.

> The real question is why County Commission Dave Potts, a Republican at least in name, is supporting this. Birmingham City Commissioner Scott Moore, another featured speaker perhaps gave away the true political motivations of this big government project when he stated that "fair transit" is a form of "social justice" on par with a "right to healthcare."  This fits right in with the Groups which are sponsoring this tax increase.

The facts show that public-transit costs outpaced inflation over the past two decades and that Mass Transportation Spending is in fact but a False Promises of Prosperity and Job Creation.  In no city is transit run on sound business principles. There is little effort to try to generate compensatory revenues from users. Huge and unending losses are the result.

There's no good reason to circumvent existing county policy and force all communities to put a SMART millage on their primary ballot in 2010. Those that aren't interested shouldn't be forced into potential participation in paying for a system that won't be used. The tax millage to support SMART bus system will fortunately expire in 2010 if this proposal is not pushed through.

Birmingham residents already property taxes to support the failed SMART bus system that are more than twice the property taxes for Parks and Recreation.