Orange County Commissioners to Discuss DOLRT Funding Letter of Intent Monday

The proposed light rail project connecting Orange and Durham Counties has been in the planning phase for several years but has seen its funding model shift multiple times during that stretch.

Voters in each county passed a sales tax increase to pay for 25 percent of the project. Another 25 percent was originally going to come from the state and the remaining 50 percent from the federal government.

But that model changed when a cap was put in place in the 2015 state budget. That cap was removed this year and replaced with another limitation, saying the state would only fund 10 percent of any light rail project. That a funding gap of more than $200 million.

That topic led to a contentious meeting last month with Orange County elected officials and staff from Go-Triangle, which is working with the counties to implement the project.

Go-Triangle said it was looking for a commitment from each of the counties by early December to move forward with the project. A release was sent out by Go-Triangle to clarify that commitment was a letter from the counties signaling their preference to continue working with the transit organization, not an immediate commitment of more funding dollars.

“That letter of intent technically does not bind us,” said Orange County Commission chair Earl McKee, who has been an opponent of the light rail project. “There are other steps where we have to make firm commitments.”

But McKee said he was still not comfortable authorizing the nonbinding letter.

“I feel like that if I vote in the affirmative for a letter of intent, that I am ethically and honor-bound to move forward with that unless something absolutely catastrophic happens,” McKee said.

Some community members have started a petition asking local officials to not invest any funding toward the light rail project. Other residents, along with the Southern Environmental Law Center, have continued asking the commissioners to support light rail.

In an op-ed in Sunday’s Chapel Hill News, six elected officials – two county commissioners, and two members each from the Carrboro and Chapel Hill governing bodies – wrote that the counties had come to far to pull the plug on the light rail project.

“In short, though funding challenges to the D-O LRT Project are real, your elected leaders are proceeding carefully in evaluating the costs and the benefits. At this juncture, all that is being asked is a renewed commitment of intent.”

The commissioners could authorize signing the letter of intent at the meeting scheduled for seven o’clock Monday night at the Whitted Building in Hillsborough.