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Potential TPS cuts factor into TARTA's budget plan
A $28.2 million operating budget the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority board of trustees approved Thursday assumes $2.6 million less revenue than last year. More than half that decline is attributed to the potential cancellation of the transit authority's transportation contract with the Toledo Public Schools, TARTA trustees were told.
The loss of the $1.5 million school contract would be made up by eliminating school-related bus routes, but an additional $1.1 million loss would occur because the transit authority faces rising fuel costs and the uncertainty of union negotiations.
James Gee, the transit authority's general manager, said after the vote it is too soon to know how any of those factors will affect TARTA operations or employment, particularly because school-related changes won't occur until fall.
"It's a long time between now and September. We'd have to look at attrition and so on," he said. "There are so many uncertainties, especially with the price of fuel -- it's just way too soon to tell."
The TARTA budget anticipates a 22.5 percent decline in operating revenue, from $6.1 million to $4.7 million, a $139,000 drop in levy revenue, and the disappearance of a $935,220 federal stimulus grant TARTA received last year.
But operating expenses are expected to keep rising. The budget for regular bus operations is set to increase by more than $450,000 despite the forecasted cut in school bus routes, and funding for paratransit will jump by just under $1 million, to $4.5 million.
A huge deficit was avoided only by eliminating $3.1 million in capital grant funding, which means the agency will have no local matching funds available for grants it might otherwise receive.
The transit authority and its largest union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 697, recently declared an impasse in contract negotiations that began in November and will submit the matter to binding arbitration.
The next step, Mr. Gee said, is for the authority and the union to pick their arbitration representatives, who in turn select the arbitration panel's third member.
Local 697 represents the transit authority's drivers and mechanics. Contract negotiations continue with the Toledo Association of Administrative Personnel, which represents TARTA's management and clerical workers, and talks are pending with a separate Local 697 bargaining unit representing Toledo Area Regional Paratransit Service employees.
Wages and benefits were sticking points with the drivers and mechanics' union, Mr. Gee told the TARTA trustees.
Cynthia Betts, Local 697's business manager, later said the two sides also could not agree on a new attendance policy under which "one of our members could lose their job for missing one day."
She also said Mr. Gee's summary overlooked that union members had foregone raises for three years, while some administrators had received increases during that time.
"We look like a bunch of money grubbers [based on Mr. Gee's report], but it's not exactly true," Ms. Betts said.
Diesel fuel is a true wild card for the transit authority, Mr. Gee said.
As gasoline prices have soared in recent weeks -- toledogasprices.com Thursday reported a local average for self-service regular of $3.484 per gallon, up 20.3 cents per gallon from a week ago and 33.5 cents higher than a month ago -- so has the price of diesel.
The $2.87 per gallon average price TARTA paid for diesel in January was 39 cents more than it paid a year earlier, and its most recent diesel purchase Monday cost $3.28 per gallon.
TARTA is exempt from federal fuel taxes and is reimbursed for all but a penny of the state fuel tax it pays, exemptions without which its diesel expenses would be even more.
Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.
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