By Kevin Flynn

At least two metro mayors are putting new proposals and pleas for unity on the table in their quest for consensus on the FasTracks funding crisis.

They are trying to find ways to build the full program, which has a price tag running $2.2 billion over RTD’s available funding. They may even be able to accept longer completion times for some of the rail lines, given what they see as the unlikely chance of persuading voters to approve a second FasTracks sales tax hike.

Mayor Erik Hansen of Thornton will ask other mayors to consider a proposal for RTD to package the at-risk rail corridors that would serve the north metro area into the existing plan to privatize the FasTracks lines to the airport and Arvada/Wheat Ridge.

Those two projects have been lumped into a deal to be offered to private consortiums that will bid next year on the right to finance, design, build, operate and maintain them, along with a commuter-rail maintenance facility. Hansen believes including the at-risk corridors in the package will improve their chance of being built.

“It is critical that we not walk away from the hard decisions because there is not yet consensus,” Hansen wrote to the mayors Sunday. “I believe we need to address this now in order to avoid an even more serious crisis that is turning into an increasingly likely story: RTD builds out three lines (or maybe even only part of those three) and leaves huge swaths of the metro area without service with no prospect to build for another 30 years.

“I don’t believe this is RTD’s intention, nor is it the metro mayors’, nor mine when I voted for this in 2004 and supported it as a Thornton councilman. It is our responsibility to see this through.”

Brighton Mayor Jan Pawlowski told her mayoral colleagues that they need to get back on the same page and find a consensus solution.

“I do not think any of us will want to have OUR NAMES, MUNICIPALITIES, AND/OR COUNTIES we represent identified as the reason FasTracks failed,” Pawlowski wrote in an e-mail Sunday. “It seems so easy to become negative, I encourage and challenge each of you to rise above pointing fingers and seek resolutions that address the big picture vision and commit ourselves to getting the job done for the betterment of the entire region.”

She opened the door to stretching RTD’s completion schedule past 2017 — a date that likely would require asking voters for another FasTracks sales tax increase, which mayors are increasingly seeing as a political hurdle too high to jump. But extending the completion time into the 2030s, as RTD officials say could be likely without new revenue, isn’t acceptable to her.

RTD wants to complete the East Corridor to Denver International Airport and the Gold Line to Arvada and Wheat Ridge, even if other FasTracks corridors can be only partially built, because those first two meet the qualifications for as much as $1 billion in federal grants. Not completing those two would put RTD even more in the hole by forfeiting that $1 billion from a financial plan already depleted by declining sales tax revenues.

The other two heavy-rail commuter corridors in FasTracks — North Metro to Commerce City/Thornton and Northwest Rail to Boulder/Longmont — don’t qualify for grants because their high costs and lower projected ridership are below the federal threshold.

But Hansen and other mayors along those at-risk corridors object to RTD fully building the airport and Arvada/Wheat Ridge lines because of the chance they will end up using money that could have gone to their communities.

Hansen told the other mayors Sunday that he will propose putting the Northwest Rail and North Metro corridors into the package, so that private consortiums can bid on building the entire heavy-rail component of FasTracks.

FasTracks, now projected to cost $6.9 billion if completed by the original 2017 date, consists of 10 rapid transit corridors — seven new ones and extensions to three existing light-rail corridors.

While the cost came down $1 billion from last year’s estimate due to the recession eating into construction costs, the economy has chipped away even more at RTD’s ability to pay for FasTracks. Anticipated capital resources dropped $1.1 billion, to $4.7 billion, through 2017, meaning RTD’s budget gap is $2.2 billion.

Hansen told mayors that his assumption is that “the likelihood of a successful ballot question in 2009 (or maybe ever) is slim” and that “the only way to build out the entire system is with an incremental approach and additional revenues.”

But part of the solution, he said, has to include at least starting construction on all new FasTracks corridors at the same time to show a commitment to serving all parts of the metro area. The mayors and RTD should negotiate an intergovernmental agreement covering all their areas of contention “to ensure that we are bound to follow this plan.”