PCTPA Board Member and City of Rocklin Mayor Ken Broadway has lived in the Rocklin area for more than 20 years. After being elected to Rocklin City Council in November 2016, he is serving his first term as Mayor.
“It is critical that we keep people and goods moving throughout Placer County. Improvements to our highways and roads support our local economy and contribute to the region’s upward trend in job growth and business development,” says PCTPA Board Member and City of Rocklin Mayor Ken Broadway. Our highways and arterial connections have begun to show strains related to this growth. However, planned improvements under construction like the work on the Interstate 80 / Highway 65 Interchange will allow our expanding labor force better access to their jobs. “The firm that I work for, United Parcel Service (UPS), has customers throughout Placer County. They depend on us to receive their products on time,” says Mayor Broadway. “Improvements to ease congestion of local highways could aid faster delivery to and from local businesses who depend upon just-in-time inventory practices.”
After 32 years with UPS, Mayor Broadway has seen the impact that Placer’s transportation system has had on employers, employees, and businesses as a whole. “Employee retention, access to labor markets, job satisfaction, and productivity are all impacted either positively or negatively by a business’s ability to get its goods, services and employees where they need to go. A number of studies have shown that businesses and employees consider factors such as long commutes and traffic congestion when making decisions about their future.” This includes a company’s decision to expand or relocate and an employee’s decision to look for other places to work. In order to fund the types of transportation projects that will keep businesses and employees moving through our county, Placer will need to identify a local funding source. Mayor Broadway believes this is a top priority and that we cannot rely on State or Federal Government sources to fix local transportation issues. While Senate Bill 1 (SB-1) provides funding to maintain and repair some roads and highways, it does not address regional capacity issues.
When asked his long-term solution for a local funding source, Mayor Broadway provided the following suggestion: “Create a transportation sales tax district, similar to the Tahoe area, and pass a transportation sales tax that is exclusively controlled by PCTPA. Both are necessary to address our region’s growing transportation needs.” One of Mayor Broadway’s goals, as a member of the PCTPA Board of Directors, is to ensure the prioritization of projects that will provide the greatest benefits to Placer as quickly as possible. These projects should also help secure additional dollars from other funding sources. “PCTPA has done great work building a transportation system that has played a key role in the strong economic growth we’ve seen over the past few years. Growth brings with it the need to expand the capacity of our transportation network and maximize the limited dollars currently available to do so.”