CANYON COUNTY, Idaho — Canyon County voters rejected a proposed $20 annual vehicle registration fee Tuesday that would have helped pay for local road projects, including paving work Nampa has put off. In neighboring Ada County, voters chose to keep an existing registration fee that brings in about $14 million a year.
Ada County’s fee was first approved in 1990. The Canyon County proposal would have created a new local fee and raised an estimated $4.4 million annually across the county. That would have covered about 9% of the estimated $49 million annual gap in local road funding.
Nampa Transportation Director Crystal Craig said the city planned to use its share for road maintenance it had deferred.
“We had planned to use that for some of our deferred maintenance, so citizens would have seen things like new pavement on the ground,” Craig said.
Several voters who spoke with Idaho News 6 in Nampa said they supported the fee because they wanted to see older roads improved and local road agencies keep up with growth. They declined to speak on camera.
WATCH: Canyon County voted down a road fee. Here’s what Nampa can still pay for.
Craig said Nampa collects impact fees from new development that can help pay for improvements such as adding lanes or widening intersections. State law limits how the city can spend that money, she said, and routine repaving is ineligible.
Nampa receives about $5 million a year in property tax revenue for transportation, Craig said. The city has more flexibility with that money, but she estimated that repaving a single mile of a two-lane city road could cost $4 million to $5 million.
Craig said federal grants have helped Nampa pay for safety improvements and road expansions, though many of those grants can’t be used for the paving work the city has put off.
The registration fee could return to the ballot in 2028 at the earliest, Craig said. Raising property taxes is another option, but she said the city views it as a last resort.
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