TARTA Levy Critic Pushes for Efficiency: Ex-Trustee Hopes Suburbs Review Transit Spending

By David Patch, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Sep. 24–Phil Caron doesn’t harbor much hope for defeating the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority levy that will be on ballots in the transit district Nov. 6.

Nor does Mr. Caron think a bill state Sen. Randy Gardner (R., Bowling Green) introduced early this year that would allow transit-authority member communities to withdraw at will stands much of a chance of passing, because he believes big-city interests will kill it.

But the Perrysburg resident and former TARTA trustee said he’ll keep pushing for reforms he believes would make the Toledo-area bus agency more responsive to its core ridership — low-income people, youth, and the elderly and disabled — while eliminating services he considers wasteful.

“I’d like to see [the TARTA levy] fail in Perrysburg,” Mr. Caron said. While that wouldn’t override a probable overwhelming positive vote from Toledo, he said, such a negative vote might at least prompt taxpayers in TARTA’s suburban communities to take a fresh look at how their transit levy dollars are spent.

Transit authority officials say the expansion and success of Call-A-Ride operations in much of TARTA’s suburban operating area are testament to the agency’s willingness to try new things.

The authority also has been a promoter of recent studies designed to identify target areas for service expansion, though expanding its geographic area into nonmember communities would require those communities to join the authority.

Mr. Caron, who was Perrysburg’s trustee on the TARTA board for several years earlier this decade, contended that TARTA only reluctantly launched the Call-A-Ride service after he began agitating for something other than regular bus routes in Perrysburg, and hasn’t taken the concept far enough.

“I’d prefer to see a more personalized service that gets [passengers] where they want to go, when they want to go there,” he said, not a big bus that runs through town every so often with few, if any, people aboard. “The stagecoach is dead. You’ve got to be a little more innovative.”

But James Bohn, the TARTA trustees’ president, said there are limitations to how much public transit can be customized.

“He [Mr. Caron] must think public transit service is a taxi service,” Mr. Bohn said.

The 1.5-mill property tax that TARTA will have on the Election Day ballot in Toledo, Perrysburg, Rossford, Maumee, Waterville, Sylvania, Sylvania Township, Spencer Township, and Ottawa Hills will replace a 10-year levy at the same rate that expires at year’s end.

But because it will be a replacement, not a renewal, it will be based on current tax assessments. TARTA officials expect the updated levy to raise $10 million annually instead of $7.5 million, and the replacement would increase the yearly tax on a home valued at $100,000 from $39 to $52.

Rising labor costs, skyrocketing fuel expenses, and rapid growth in the transit authority’s special door-to-door minibus service for disabled passengers who can’t ride regular bus routes all are driving the transit authority’s budget higher.

The agency resolved last year to place the renewal on the ballot in November, 2006, but its administration then failed to meet a filing deadline and the question was dropped.

The transit authority is spending $2.9 million from cash reserves to cover a budget deficit this year.

Best known for protesting the light ridership on the regular-route TARTA bus that routinely passes his house with few, if any, riders, Mr. Caron said he’s also no fan of the transit authority’s express commuter buses or Muddy Shuttle runs for Toledo Mud Hens games, even though those routes have relatively high average ridership.

“Public transportation in Perrysburg is a necessity. It is about helping those who need a ride to get somewhere they need to go,” he said, countering any perception he’s anti-transit. “But it’s not about taking people to Mud Hens games, not about getting them to their offices for $60,000 or $70,000 jobs.”

The regularity with which buses run empty through Perrysburg, Mr. Caron said, shows that transit officials “make zero attempt to find out what their capacity is, what the need is.”

Mr. Caron especially questions the propriety of the 42X route that TARTA established between the Miracle Mile shopping plaza and the Owens-Illinois campus at Levis Commons in Perrysburg, contending that many of its patrons may live outside TARTA’s service area and thus don’t pay transit taxes.

James Gee, the transit authority’s general manager, said the route TARTA established when O-I moved its downtown headquarters to Perrysburg was set up after consulting with the company to determine where concentrations of its employees live.

But in any case, Mr. Gee said, “there’s no practical way for us to check IDs to see who lives in the service area and who doesn’t.

“The most important thing to us is, folks are riding the bus,” the transit manager said.

As for the empty or nearly empty buses, Mr. Gee said, that’s a function of Perrysburg being at one end of the routes that serve it. Ridership is higher at other points along those routes, he said.

“It would be inefficient to change buses at the [Perrysburg] border,” Mr. Gee said. “It’s true for everywhere — the ends of the routes tend to be lower in ridership because it’s the end of the route.”

And Mr. Bohn said the transit authority offers such services as commuter expresses and Mud Hens shuttles precisely to appeal to suburbanites who might otherwise have no use for the bus but pay taxes into the system.

“We’re giving back to the communities that don’t use it so much,” the trustee president said.

Besides the 1.5-mill levy that expires this year, the transit authority collects a one-mill tax that will be due for renewal or replacement three years from now.

Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.

—–

To see more of The Blade, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.toledoblade.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NYSE:OI,