Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer has his own Bucket List.

On it are all the FasTracks north metro, Aurora and southern light rail extension projects that RTD says are at risk of incompletion because of the drop in projected revenue and major increase in costs for the FasTracks program.

Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer

“If we go after new money and put it into the same bucket, I don’t think you could get the support for that,” Tauer said at a Monday morning meeting of a Metro Mayors Caucus task force that has been meeting with RTD for a year seeking a solution to the FasTracks funding crisis.

Tauer suggested a binding agreement and ballot language that would, in effect, spin off the at-risk corridors into their own guaranteed funding stream – Bucket 2. He would designate the original 0.4-cent sales tax – or Bucket 1 – to fund the corridors RTD is already moving ahead with – the West Corridor now under construction, East Corridor to Denver International Airport, Gold Line to Arvada-Wheat Ridge, plus associated maintenance facilities and small portions of the at-risk lines.

Left unsaid is what happens if voters “kick the bucket” and say no.

Five other mayors present and Jefferson County Commissioner Kathy Hartman, who is participating with the Metro Mayors Caucus process, agreed that Tauer’s idea is worth fleshing out.

Thornton Mayor Erik Hansen

“I don’t have all the answers but I think we need to start over,” Hansen told the group. “RTD needs to start over. I think the original assumptions for Bucket 1 should be re-evaluated and a new plan developed that provides certainty and fairness and equity in Bucket 1 that doesn’t exist right now. Right now it pits one region against another.

Hansen has consistently complained about going ahead with the assumption that full funding should be apportioned from the revenue already coming in to build the airport and Arvada lines. RTD has said that is the most likely way to get the most built because full coal funding for those can leverage up to $1 billion in federal grants. The other lines don’t qualify for federal grants.

If RTD doesn’t apportion full local funding to the airport and Gold Line corridors, the FasTracks financing plan could lose the $1 billion in potential federal aid.

But Hansen said every corridor needs to have “skin in the game.”

“The question is what is the optimal use of the dollars we have now to maximize mobility in the metro area?” he said after the meeting. “No one is asking that. It’s all about who gets what.”

Time is getting short for RTD and the caucus to pull together a consensus that would result in a second sales tax increase getting on the November 2010 ballot. Maria Garcia Berry, a political consultant working for RTD, told the group that in order to have enough lead time to build a campaign for a year from now, the mayors’ group would have to reach agreement by February considering the mandatory reviews and agreements that would have to follow that.

“Because of the amount of work this takes, do you want to look at a 2012 election?” she asked the group. “I’m not confident 2010 will happen. If you have any hope of an election in 2010, if this is not wrapped up by Q1 you will not have it. Meaning February.”

Mayors were divided over when to go to the ballot.

“My concern about going in 2010 is you have some risk factors taken out, but not all of it,” said Mayor Pat Quinn of Broomfield.

But delaying a voter decision to 2012 would mean the airport line could get started in the meantime and tie up Bucket 1 resources that regional leaders might want to divide up differently in the even voters say no to more money.

Tauer said the two-buckets plan would help ensure the at-risk corridors get built by insulating them from whatever RTD decides to do with the first-phase projects in Bucket 1. He soft-pedaled any criticism of RTD’s initial financial projections by pointing out that the only thing true about 25-year projections is that they will be wrong. It’s time to move past that, he suggested.

“In order to make this work we’re going to need more money,” Tauer said. “If we want to talk about getting more revenue we’re going to have to think differently, because things have changed. Is it realistic or fair to expect any forecast to be right for 25 years? Now we can only get three lines done and part of a fourth.

“We’re going to need a second bucket. How do we make the second bucket work differently? It should not be based on the economy, future costs or RTD actions. The second bucket goes to Phase 2 lines to get those built out. If we just put new revenue back in the same bucket with the first, you’ll be back in the same situation.

He said ballot language should be crafted to legally enforce the allocations to each corridor.

“Our goal is full build-out by 2017.”

The at-risk corridors include the I-225 light rail corridor through Aurora. Under current funding with a sales tax voters approved in 2004, only a small portion of it could be built, along with portions of the Northwest Rail to Westminster, Broomfield, Boulder and Longmont, North Metro Corridor to Commerce City and Thornton, and extensions of light rail in the southwest and southeast metro area and downtown.

That’s because of the impact of the recession on sales tax collections – expected to be down 11 percent this year instead of up more than six percent as RTD originally projected six years ago – plus an unprecedented worldwide spike in the cost of construction materials, which has come down only slightly, and increases in the cost of railroad property.

Combined, they have formed a $2.2 billion gap between RTD’s estimated $6.95 billion cost to build everything by 2017 and the $4.7 billion it now expects to have to build it.

Hartman and Lone Tree mayor Jim Gunning concurred about the difficulty of making long-term economic forecasts in today’s volatile economic conditions.

“Is there a mayor or commissioner out there who (accurately) forecast their budget this year?” Gunning asked.

Hartman said the growth years in the late 1990s gave a skewed background for later projections. Now that record tax revenue declines are being booked, it’s easy to look back and say RTD should have aimed lower.

“But if RTD had come into the room in 2004 with the kind of numbers we’re now asking them to use, everybody would have laughed them out of the room,” she said. “Let’s face it, forecast beyond three years and you’re into SWAGs, and beyond five years you’re into Hail Marys.”

Phil Washington, RTD’s interim general manager, told the group that RTD will have new cost and revenue projections by the first of the year, part of an annual program evaluation it does to adjust FasTracks to changing conditions.

But before that, it plans to assemble an outside working group of economists and staff from other government agencies to develop a new methodology for forecasting sales tax revenues. By the end of November, RTD hopes to have a suggested methodology that can be vetted by an outside expert and then use that consensus method to project future FasTracks revenues.

He said that RTD will take the mayors’ suggestion to incorporate new assumptions of a second tax increase in 2012 rather than 2010. Delaying a new tax increase – assuming voters would approve it – means delaying the 2017 completion date.

Hansen didn’t like the idea of the at-risk corridors being split off into a second bucket without first resolving whether they’re getting all the resources they are due out of the first bucket.

“I don’t think that you let RTD off the hook that easily,” Hansen said. “You can’t say, ‘We’re always going to be wrong so why bother.’”

Other mayors disagreed.

“I don’t see any need to look backwards, and that’s what I see you doing, Erik,” said Lakewood Mayor Bob Murphy.

“We cannot keep looking back,” agreed Nancy Sharpe, Greenwood Village mayor.

“At some point,” Tauer countered, “we’re going to have to talk about how to move forward. We’re not going to get it dead right for the next 25 years.”