I don’t know anyone who is looking for a way to pay more taxes. However, I do know people who would love to leverage their expenses and investments with 30- to 40-cent dollars. If you could save 60 to 70 percent on your investment dollars, wouldn’t you seriously consider it? If you worked for an employer who was willing to match each of your dollars with company dollars placed in an account for you, wouldn’t you take advantage of that offer?

By approving the Transportation Benefit District (TBD) sales tax and using those dollars vs. property tax dollars, our community citizens can save a huge amount of money. Visitors and tourists in our community will be paying 60 to 70 percent of the two-tenths of one percent sales tax. North Bend and the entire Valley draw thousands of tourists and visitors to our area every year. These visitors and tourists use our roads, it’s only fair that we provide an opportunity for them to help pay for maintenance and repairs to these roads and city streets.

We are all aware of streets and sidewalks in the area that are in need of repair. We’ve got choices about fixing those streets and sidewalks. One choice would be to do nothing. With your own house, driveway, walkways, how’s that working for you? Is your house value increasing if you let things deteriorate from year to year?

In total, this TBD proposal would raise an estimated $400,000 annually for the 10-year term of the tax. For local citizens, the investment would be about $12 to $18 per year or average about $1.25 per month, assuming regular household shopping dollars spent in North Bend in the range of $600 to $900 per month. Not a bad return on your money, and again, we are talking about less than $1.50 per month to get our roads fixed.

Another benefit of the TBD is the ability to leverage grant requests. The city will be able to make application for “qualifying transportation funding match grants” by applying projected TBD funding source. The bottom line – matching grant funds would result in a 2-for-1 benefit to the TBD. If the $400,000 TBD revenue were all to be applied to “match grants” that would result in $800,000 funding per year. Again, not a bad return on your money.

The legislature has provided for taxpayer protection in the TBD option. TBD tax cannot be collected for a period greater than 10 years in this case, without another vote of the citizens, and the TBD revenue can only be used for maintenance and repair of specified projects described in detail in the city’s six-year transportation update.

To give you perspective on sales tax rates, Bellevue and Issaquah rates are 9.5 percent — our retail dollars spent there are taxed at a higher rate. The “new” sales tax rate in North Bend would only be 8.8 percent with the increase of .2 percent, to be spent on our roads.

Also, the TBD seems to be a much better option than raising our license tab fees. It’s your choice. With roads, it is like the old Fram Oil Filter commercial about protecting your car engine—you can pay it now or you can pay more later!

• Sherwood Korssjoen and Fritz Ribary are authors of the ‘pro’ statement in the local voter’s pamphlet.