Sierra Wave: Local News for Mammoth Lakes, Bishop, and the Eastern Sierra - Rough Road Ahead For Public Transportation

Rough Road Ahead For Public Transportation

Written by Tom Woods

Thursday, 07 August 2008

After barely balancing their budget, the Eastern Sierra Transit Authority now faces a state budget problem that could lead to layoffs and cuts in service. In July, the ESTA board approved rate hikes to avoid cuts in service that many elderly and disabled people use to get around the Eastern Sierra.

At an emergency Board meeting Thursday, Transit Authority Director John Helm, explained that the state has further cut transit funding which is expected to leave ESTA $215,000 in the hole next year. But, it gets worse. Cash flow in the short term is also short. Mammoth Finance Director Brad Koehn told the board that ESTA only has enough cash flow to write payroll checks next Tuesday and one pay period after that. Even those two payroll periods depend on whether or not certain promised checks to ESTA are in the mail.

With the possible 59% reduction in state funding and the immediate cash flow problem, Director Helm recommended that the ESTA board, made up of members from the Inyo and Mono Supervisors, Bishop City Council, and Mammoth Town Council, ask the Local Transportation Commission for $150,000 to cover operations costs. Some creative shifting of employees and route schedules could save $50,000 as well.

The big ticket recommendation was to ask Inyo County, Mono County, the City of Bishop, and the Town of Mammoth to loan ESTA $325,000. With no set plan on how ESTA would pay the loans back, the two Inyo Supervisors on ESTA Board, Linda Arcularius and Susan Cash, were concerned that this loan would become a gift and Inyo would not see the money come back.

The Bishop City Council members, Susan Cullen and Jeff Griffiths, along with Mammoth Council member John Eastman, Mono Supervisors Vikki Bauer and Byng Hunt, felt that their boards might approve the loan. In the end, they decided to ask the Mammoth Town council for a $125,000 loan, and ask for $100,000 from the Bishop City Council and the Mono Supervisors.

The idea of the loans is to float ESTA through the current budget crisis, but with a system that costs more to run then it takes in with fares and grant money, the ESTA board plans to meet again in September, to discuss ways to reduce spending. If the state budget plays out as expected, this could mean cuts in service and layoffs.

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RUSS MONROE said:

ESTA is bankrupt. This is a major disaster for both counties, but it is currently factual and no loans should be made to save it. Our counties need public transportation, but this system has failed. One way to help the bureaucracies understand the problem is to point out that the failure of this system should end the right of the court system to issue summonses. If there is NO public transit to get a juror from say: Tecoppa to Independence then how can the ‘bench’ order a warrant for the arrest of someone who has no public transportation available. Oops, gosh that is and has been true for years. Ok how about from Big Pine to Independence or Lone Pine to .... or Mammoth to Bridgeport or ?? The failure of government is much larger than “the problems of the elderly and the ‘handicapped”. It is a breakdown that will crush us all under the weight of the same arrogant stupidity that collapsed the former Soviet Union and for the same reasons. Providing services that most people cannot even use, does not and will not make sense. We need a public transportation system that gets people to work and back every day when they need to get there... and back home that night. ESTA was doomed from the start because it did not address public need, just some bureaucratic grant function that there is no longer a surplus to fund. How are you going to vote in November to get us past this problem?

August 08, 2008

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