State Funds Help Sta Reduce Planned Cuts Board Eliminates One Bus Route, Scales Back Others

The Spokane Transit Authority gave its riders an early Christmas gift Wednesday, deciding to keep buses running on holidays and for special events such as Bloomsday.

A surprise boost in state tax money had board members in a giving mood.

STA is facing layoffs and service cuts because of Initiative 695, which ended the motor vehicle excise tax, replacing it with a $30 fee. Revenue from the tax made up 40 percent of the transit system’s operating budget.

STA officials have proposed cutting spending by 20 percent for the next four years and using money from a $38 million reserve fund to balance the budget.

The state recently sent STA $4.4million in motor vehicle excise taxes, and another $3.2 million is expected this spring. STA officials drafted their budget without those dollars because they’d been told the state might use that money to fill its own budget hole left by I-695.

The $7.6 million windfall caused board members to stop short of approving wholesale the first step of a two-step plan to cut spending. They did opt to make a few changes aimed at increasing efficiency, including doing away with a route that had low ridership and reducing the frequency of a few routes for the same reason.

But other proposals in the first phase, such as eliminating holiday and special-event buses, were not adopted.

A second set of proposals that includes cutting the hours buses and paratransit vans run will come before the board at its March 15 meeting.

City Councilman Steve Eugster urged the board to use all its reserves before making any service cuts.

“The single function of STA is to provide transportation services, nothing else,” Eugster said. “It is not in the business of building complexes downtown. It is not in the business of building park-and-rides. It is not in the business of building roads.”

Eugster said he didn’t want to see the bus service gutted when he doubted I-695 would survive constitutional challenges. If it did, he said he thought voters would be willing to spend more on mass transit.

Cutting service now is “really an effort to avoid going back to taxpayers to ask for more money,” Eugster said. He added that taxpayers would be unlikely to pay more as long as STA had a $38 million reserve.

While the board made no decision on the next set of proposed cuts, several members hinted they might be willing to delay major changes until year’s end, using the motor vehicle taxes to plug STA’s leaky 2000 budget.

“I could be persuaded … to add that back into this year’s budget, to help take us through without any reductions,” said county Commissioner Kate McCaslin, an STA board member.

Curt Volesky, president of the union that represents STA’s 350 bus drivers, maintenance workers and clerks, said he hoped the board would do just that. Several union members would lose their jobs if the cuts go through, although transit officials haven’t said what positions would go.

“We have the money to make it through this year,” Volesky said. “I don’t think we need to jump headlong at a 20 percent cut.”

WHAT’S NEXT More changes The Spokane Transit Authority made the following service changes Wednesday that take effect March 26: Discontinued the No. 81 Mead route. Reduced service on the No. 28 Upriver Drive bus to five times daily. Reduced service to hourly between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on the No. 65 Cheney/EWU and the No. 23 Maple/Ash routes. Reduced service to hourly between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. on the No. 95 Argonne and the No. 96 Pines routes. Reduced service on the No. 41 Browne’s Addition route to peak-hour service only, 6 to 9 a.m., 3:30 to 6 p.m., with no weekend service. The No. 2 Shuttle will run until 9:30 p.m. on weekdays.