Budget Portal

Where your local tax dollars come from, and where they go.

Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission

Approved budget, FY 2026-27 (July 1, 2026 – June 30, 2027)

The Commission approved the budget on April 2, 2026 (Resolution 50-26). It has amended it since (including $2.7 million more Measure D for the Highway 1 State Park Drive to Bay/Porter auxiliary lanes); the figures below are the approved April 2 budget.

Measure D sales tax revenue (forecast)

$27.7M

The countywide half-cent transportation sales tax the RTC administers; up 0.24% from FY 2025-26.

Measure D FY2026-27 Budget (approved April 2, 2026; PDF page numbers), p. 5

Transportation Development Act (TDA) funds apportioned

$13.5M

State quarter-cent sales tax for transit and transportation, shared out by the RTC.

SCCRTC FY2026-27 Budget (approved April 2, 2026; PDF page numbers), p. 7

State Transit Assistance and State of Good Repair revenue

$5.5M

SCCRTC FY2026-27 Budget (approved April 2, 2026; PDF page numbers), p. 5

Authorized staff positions (full-time equivalent)

30

5 of the 30 positions were vacant when the budget was prepared.

SCCRTC FY2026-27 Budget (approved April 2, 2026; PDF page numbers), p. 12

Ask about the budget

Ask in plain English. The answer comes from the budget documents themselves, with a link to every page it uses.

Answers are written by an AI model (Claude) from the published budget documents and can contain mistakes; the linked pages are the authority. Your question is sent to Anthropic to be answered; this site doesn't keep it.

How Measure D money is split (voter-approved formula)

Total $27.7M

  • Neighborhood: cities and County roads, incl. Highways 9 & 17 (30%)$8.1M (29.1%)
  • Highway corridors (25%)$6.7M (24.3%)
  • Transit and paratransit: METRO and Community Bridges (20%)$5.4M (19.4%)
  • Active transportation, incl. the Coastal Rail Trail (17%)$4.6M (16.5%)
  • Rail corridor (8%)$2.2M (7.8%)
  • RTC administration and implementation$796K (2.9%)

Source: Measure D FY2026-27 Budget (approved April 2, 2026; PDF page numbers), p. 5

Where the Transportation Development Act money goes

Total $13.5M

  • Santa Cruz METRO$9.3M (69.0%)
  • RTC administration$1.0M (7.4%)
  • Specialized transit (Community Bridges)$915K (6.8%)
  • RTC planning$689K (5.1%)
  • RTC reserve fund$661K (4.9%)
  • County of Santa Cruz$270K (2.0%)
  • Vision Zero bike and pedestrian safety (County HSA)$156K (1.2%)
  • City of Santa Cruz (non-transit)$133K (1.0%)
  • Volunteer Center$109K (0.8%)
  • City of Watsonville$108K (0.8%)
  • Bike to Work/School$72K (0.5%)
  • City of Scotts Valley$25K (0.2%)
  • TDA reserve fund$20K (0.2%)
  • City of Capitola$20K (0.2%)

Source: SCCRTC FY2026-27 Budget (approved April 2, 2026; PDF page numbers), p. 7

Good to know

Notes on the numbers
  • Most of the money the RTC handles passes through to other agencies (METRO, cities, the County, Community Bridges); the RTC's budget book presents it program by program rather than as a single total, so no overall total is shown here.
  • The RTC amended the FY 2026-27 budget after April 2 (April 2: $2.7 million more Measure D for Highway 1 auxiliary lanes; May 7: programming and TDA claim amendments). Those changes aren't reflected in these figures.

Every figure is taken from Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission's own budget documents and was checked against the source page on 2026-09-27. All of this budget's documents