For the second time in the past five years, roughly two-thirds of Macomb County voters approved a proposal to renew the property tax that supports public transit (primarily SMART) service in the county.
Over 65% of voters supported the proposal – which, remarkably, appears to have passed in every precinct in the county, even in its more conservative north.
Back in 2018, after a well-funded “vote no” campaign by anti-tax activists, Macomb County voters barely approved the SMART funding proposal, which passed by just a few dozen votes. This Tuesday’s result, however, suggests that those narrow margins are decidedly a thing of the past.
Even Leon Drolet, the libertarian-leaning township official who spearheaded the 2018 “no” campaign, now supports the transit millage, as the Macomb Daily reported earlier this year.
Although the Macomb County Board of Commissioners has a Republican majority, the Commissioners voted unanimously to place the millage renewal on the ballot, suggesting broad bipartisan recognition of the need for transit in the region.
The vote in Macomb means that for the first time ever, starting this year, the entire tri-county region will be covered by a roughly 1-mill property tax for transit, most of which supports SMART bus service. (The city of Detroit also invests substantial additional money in DDOT bus service through its General Fund. A number of smaller transit providers, such as the West Oakland Transportation Authority and North Oakland Transportation Authority, provide dial-a-ride bus service in certain suburban and rural areas.)
TRU thanks Macomb County voters for their support for this essential service, and we are grateful to all the TRU members and other volunteers who helped get out the vote in Macomb!
We hope this vote – as well as the recent strong majorities for transit in Wayne and Oakland County – will send a message to elected officials. The people of metro Detroit, given the opportunity, are ready to invest in the transit services that become more vital with each passing year.
In other news, 7 other transit millages on Michigan ballots were also passed by voters, often by even larger margins. The victories joined a wave of other wins for transit across the country, most notably in the San Francisco Bay Area, where voters supported a transit sales tax measure anticipated to bring in about $1 billion annually to support transit systems around the region.