Sales tax increase puts onus on STA

Even as local bus riders are breathing a sigh relief, Spokane Transit Authority officials are gearing up for more work.

Voters overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday a .3 percent sales tax increase for transit, preventing drastic cuts in bus service planned for this summer.

Now STA must make service improvements to enhance Spokane’s bus system and earn the trust the public placed in it, said Spokane Transit board member and Spokane Valley City Councilman Dick Denenny.

“As far as I’m concerned, our mission has just begun,” Denenny said.

STA will meet with neighborhood groups, businesses, schools and others to come up with better ways to provide service and to get more people to ride the bus, he explained.

The Valley would especially benefit from a new approach to bus routing, Denenny said.

“We’ve had people complain about going downtown or having to go in circles,” he said.

Direct bus routes between places like Spokane Valley and Spokane Community College could be added.

Other changes might include online trip planning and pass sales, shuttles to major business centers and new college bus pass programs similar to Eastern Washington University’s Eagle Pass, said STA spokeswoman Molly Myers.

The election results also keep STA’s exploration of light rail moving forward.

“From a federal funding standpoint, it would have been the end,” said Myers of Spokane’s light rail research. “Without a healthy bus system, light rail wouldn’t have been able to function.”

But money for new services won’t be immediately available.

The increased tax probably won’t be collected until October, said STA finance director Jim Plaster.

That’s because it typically takes the Washington Department of Revenue 90 days to process tax changes and they are put into place only at the start of a new quarter, Plaster explained, adding that there isn’t time to assess the new tax in July.

So how will STA make do until it gets its first payments in December?

Since the agency’s undesignated reserve account will run out this summer, STA will have to borrow from other accounts designated for items such as self-insurance, grant matching funds and money set aside for other bills, Plaster said.

And once the increased tax money starts coming in, it’s important that STA not build up the large reserve accounts that it has in the past, said board member and Liberty Lake Councilman Brian Sayrs.

Sayrs said he will sponsor a resolution at the next STA board meeting to cap the amount of the undesignated reserves. STA couldn’t build up a reserve greater than one-third of the tax it will now be authorized to collect, about $12 million.

Of course, STA could just spend all the money but it would have to justify the spending to the public, Sayrs said.

“Brought out into the light, only the appropriate projects will survive,” he said.