The Winslow City Council voted to approve the hiring of a yet to be named transit manager, a generic overview of which transit plan to adopt and the matching $100,000 for the next two years to leverage in the application for a transit grant in their Dec. 12 meeting.
Funding for the transit project will come from various sources. In addition to the funds approved by the council, the city will apply for a Section 5311 grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). The program provides capital, planning and operating assistance to states to support public transportation in rural areas with populations less than 50,000, where many residents often rely on public transit to reach their destinations. Morley explained, “It is a two year cycle on the grant, you apply every two years.”
The vote was split with council members Marshal Losey, Tom Chacon Sr. and Judy Howell against the movement, and members Curtis Hardy, Bob Schlesinger and Harold Soehner in favor. Mayor Robin Boyd cast the deciding vote to move forward with the process.
The votes against the project contained a shared sentiment. Chacon said, “I cannot in clear conscience support the transit system proposal and the reason is, we need the money for infrastructure for this community. We need the money for wells, waters, our streets and the number of people that is being served is very minimal, we serve the community in general.
“This is something that in the future we may need, but right now I don’t think it is in the realm of reality. The people have spoken and said we don’t need a transit system today,” he concluded.
Howell concurred, “My biggest concern with all of this is that it is going to be way too expensive for the Winslow people to afford and you’re not going to have the base to support it. It’s going to fall on the taxpayers and we are going to waste several hundred thousand dollars for nothing.” She went on to say that she felt the money would be better spent on hiring more police and animal control officers, as she said, “I have been suggesting the last seven or eight years.”
In January of this year, the City of Winslow took advantage of a grant from the Arizona Department of Transportation to commission a report on transportation needs of Winslow citizens. Tasked with the job was the Northern Arizona Intergovernmental Public Transportation Authority (NAIPTA) led by Katie Morley and Jim Dickey.
To better understand local transit needs, NAIPTA conducted two surveys yielding more than 900 responses. Those surveys were administered through utility bills, were available online and were offered at the Winslow Public Library. According to Morley, “The utility bill survey was determined to be statistically viable,” meaning, a large enough cross-section of the population participated in the survey.
According to the NAIPTA report, 30 percent of Winslow households are in poverty, 45 percent of households have one vehicle or less, 14.5 percent of people under 65 have a disability and 10 percent of the population is age 65 or older. That information was then used to determine that a commuter transportation system as well as a local system may be useful to the community of Winslow. The decision on which system to adopt will be made at a later date, as the council was not in agreement on the system best for the community.
City Manager Steve Pauken made it a point to let citizens and council members know where the money would come from. “Here is how it would break down. Your staffing would be $10,000 local and $40,000 federal funding, so it’s 20 percent from the city and 80 from the feds. In the first and second years we are looking at capital acquisition of a bus or two depending on how it shapes up,” he stated.
Pauken went on to explain that for the remaining $90,000 per year, the grant would provide approximately $450,000. His next point was aimed at council member Howell as he said, “Judy, the way you characterized it was like there was going to be an endless money pit, if nobody puts a dime in the fare box, these costs are fixed. So, I don’t think its fair to characterize it any other way than the way its been presented to us.”
Pauken made his position clear as he addressed the council, saying, “First of all, I just want to make sure that everybody understands, the money that would be used to match the 5311 grant would come from the general fund. Some of the examples that were being given about fixing streets and well fields and sewer systems, don’t apply because those are enterprise funds, they are funded totally separately. We are not taking away opportunities to fill potholes and pave streets doing this, we are not taking away the opportunity to dig a new well if we need one. From the standpoint of clarity, it needs to be clarified that that stuff doesn’t suffer.
“All the years I have been here, there was a perceived need to do this. I don’t think this is about funding much at all,” stated Pauken.
The conversation went well over an hour, ending in the vote to move forward. During the motion Vice Mayor Soehner said, “I am in favor of a fixed, or deviated fixed route, but I’ll leave it a bit more general so that we may come back and choose that at a later date.”
The motion passed, with the understanding that more discussion will be had in the month to come before the deadline for the 5311 grant application in February.
