Voters this week approved a quarter-cent sales tax, paving the way for an extra $3 million a year to build roads and plan future rights of way. At the same time, they rejected a sales-tax hike that would have expanded bus service.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Cache County Council members and County Attorney George Daines campaigned for the road tax and against the transit tax.

"The transit proposition is virtually without merit based on the ridership data," County Councilman H. Craig Petersen recently told the Logan City Council. "We can buy a new bus if and when we need one. We have traffic congestion now."

In the end, voters appeared to agree; 54 percent of them approved the road tax and 10 Cache cities opposed the transit hike. (One city, Lewiston, did vote to join the Cache Valley Transit District).

Despite the sweeping setback at the polls, the transit district still got a funding boost this week when the Logan City Council approved a five-hundredths of one percent increase to the bus budget.

Curtis Roberts, the district's finance director, told city officials the higher rate will prevent the loss of more than a half-million dollars starting Jan. 1.

"This [increase] holds our funding neutral," Roberts said.

abrunson@sltrib.com