Durham County Proposes Filling DOLRT Funding Gap

****UPDATE: Durham County commissioners approved the letter offering additional DOLRT funding on Monday night.****

Durham County appears to be set to fill a funding gap to allow the Durham-Orange Light Rail transit project to move forward.

The project has seen funding challenges throughout the life of the proposal, including separate moves by the North Carolina General Assembly in recent years.

The latest impediment came during the short legislative session this year. Lawmakers initially included budget language requiring light rail projects to obtain all non-state funding before the state would allocate the money. But that would effectively kill the project because the federal money – which is set to cover 50 percent of the $2.47 billion in capital costs – requires all non-federal funding to be committed before allocating federal money.

Legislators eventually backed off of the requirement in a technical corrections bill. But a cap was placed on the amount of overall state funding that could be devoted to the 17.7-mile DOLRT project, specifically.

The new cap left a roughly $57.6 million funding gap for the project. Even so, Carrboro Alderman and chair of the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization Damon Seils said at the time that the new cap is “one we can work with.”

Now, thanks to “robust and sufficient” dedicated transit revenues, Durham officials appear prepared to cover that funding gap.

Durham commissioners are scheduled to vote Monday night on approving a letter from chair of the board Wendy Jacobs to the GoTriangle Board of Trustees. The Orange County Board of Commissioners could then consider approval of a companion letter at its meeting on September 4.

“Based on updated modeling with still conservative estimates, Durham County’s dedicated transit revenues are robust and sufficient to cover the revenue shortfall,” the draft letter reads. “Durham County is committed to using these additional funds for this purpose.”

This result comes after a series of meetings between elected officials from the two counties. The meetings were triggered because the funding agreement for the project requires that the parties meet to “determine how to address the situation,” when a funding issue arises.

Jacobs wrote that she and Durham Commissioner Ellen Reckhow met with their Orange County counterparts Mark Dorosin and Mark Marcoplos initially on June 21. The four held several additional meetings to discuss the shortfall, Jacobs wrote, leading to Monday’s proposed commitment from Durham.

Dorosin also issued a statement Monday on behalf of Orange County commissioners.

“We appreciate the collaborative and cooperative support of our colleagues in Durham, and are encouraged that we’ve been able to come up with a positive strategy for keeping the Durham-Orange Light Rail project moving forward.”

The total cost of the DOLRT rises to approximately $3.3 billion when financing is included.

A capital campaign is also being led by a non-profit branch of GoTriangle to raise funds, in some cases through the donation of rights-of-way, to help fund the project.