By BRAD COOPER
The Kansas City Star
Kansas City’s bus service is entering a gloomy period like the one seven years ago when voters had to pass a new tax to avert severe cuts.
The outlook for the already troubled bus system worsened recently when it didn’t get a $3 million boost from Missouri that it had hoped for, but instead lost $640,000 in existing revenue from state budget cuts.
When Gov. Jay Nixon slashed $281 million from the budget in May, he also reduced general state aid to bus service across Missouri by more than 80 percent, including money for Kansas City.
That won’t lead to immediate service reductions, but the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority plans to seek a pay freeze from union workers and may have to raise fares eventually.
“It’s a very precarious funding situation,” said Mark Huffer, general manager of the ATA.
“We’ll always be able to provide service, but with a decline in most of our funding sources, that level of service is not going to be able to be maintained.”
The loss of state money could affect cities such as Lee’s Summit, Liberty and Independence, which contract with the ATA for service.
The ATA is alerting those cities about the loss of funding and discussing how it might affect them.
The problems confronting bus service in Kansas City aren’t unique.
About 70 percent of the country’s transit agencies are predicting budget shortfalls this year, according to a survey by the American Public Transportation Association.
More than eight of 10 have already cut service, raised fares or considered both.
A bill that would provide $2 billion to transit agencies nationwide was introduced in the U.S. Senate in May.
In Kansas City, the ATA is bracing for the future, knowing it will probably burn through its reserve funds by mid-2014 without a new revenue source or serious cutbacks in service.
In the short term, management is going to ask union drivers to forgo raises next year when negotiations start on a new contract.
Union workers also will be asked to give up holiday pay if they work on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Veterans Day and Presidents Day.
Huffer said the request is similar to what was imposed on the ATA’s salaried employees this year. They went without raises and worked three holidays they once had off.
Every 1 percent increase in union wages costs taxpayers $341,000. The ATA could save an additional $366,000 if the union agrees to the holiday pay freeze for 2011.
In the long term, bus riders — many who make less than $20,000 a year — may have to share the burden. The transit agency has plugged a 25-cent fare increase every three years into its long-term budget assumptions, though that is subject to change if funding improves.
The agency also is planning for increases in the price of Share-A-Fare, a transit service for disabled, elderly and poor people. The fare could go up 25 cents next year for disabled riders who qualify for the current $2.50 flat fee.
The ATA is funded with two taxes: a dedicated three-eighths-cent sales tax first approved in 2003 and a half-cent sales tax that the city can use for other transportation projects.
Revenues from those taxes have remained relatively flat.
But even as voters put more money into the bus system, the city has kept a bigger share of the half-cent sales tax for itself in recent years.
The half penny brings in about $29.6 million a year, of which the city keeps about $5.4 million for itself and the ATA gets about $19.8 million. About $3.1 million goes to subsidize development projects.
The acting city manager, Troy Schulte, said that in an ideal world, the city would send all those transportation dollars to the bus system, but unfortunately it has other pressing needs.
Schulte said the revenue crunch in recent years has taken its toll, and the city has made a policy decision to direct some of that half-cent sales tax money to traffic engineering, traffic signals and transportation planning, which it legally is allowed to do.
“It’s taking advantage of what little flexibility we’ve got in the budget,” he said.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/08/07/2135802/after-state-budget-cuts-kcs-bus.html#ixzz0w8GS8OGK