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Metro says either higher tax levy or fare increase is needed
(by Rebecca S. Rivas - June 19, 2008)
In response to a projected $19.2 million shortfall in Metro’s 2009 annual budget, Metro officials will hold public hearings from June 17 to June 25 to discuss four options for cutting services and raising fare prices.
The June 18 meeting is from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the St. Louis County Government Center, 41 South Central Ave. in Clayton. The June 23 meeting is from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in room 208 at St. Louis City Hall, 1200 Tucker Blvd. On June 25, the meeting is from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Metro headquarters, 707 N. 1st St.
Metro, the region’s transit agency, has a $221.6 million budget that is set to take effect July 1, but officials said the agency will not cut services or raise fares until January.
The first budget-balancing option includes keeping the base fares for bus and rail tickets the same but increasing transfer costs from $2.25 to $2.50. The two-hour pass would limit passengers to one bus transfer; currently passengers can transfer multiple times within the two-hour period. The first option would also raise monthly passes from $60 to $65 and weekly passes from $19 to $21. An all-day pass would be $6.50 instead of $4.50.
Options two, three and four would raise all fares for both bus and rail, and the final option calls for the highest fare increases. Current base prices are $1.75 for the bus and $2 for MetroLink. Options two, three and four would raise bus fares to $1.85, $2 and $2.25, respectively, and rail fares to $2.10, $2.25 and $2.50.
In option four, the monthly pass would go up by $10 and the weekly pass by $6.
Metro’s website has a chart that fully explains the possible changes to fare structure. It can be found at www.metrostlouis.org/MetroBus/PublicHearingNotice0608.pdf.
Potential service cuts are not currently being discussed, although they will be the subject of public hearings later in the summer, said Metro spokeswoman Dianne Williams.
Metro officials said the budget shortfall primarily comes from a $10.9 million unfunded expense in post-employment benefits, which do not include pensions. But the remaining shortfall is $8.3 million, part of which has been covered in recent years by federal congestion-mitigation money. The money was only intended as a temporary infusion of cash to help the new MetroLink line, which opened in 2006, find its footing.
However last year the agency spent more than $21 million on legal expenses for the lawsuit against the original designers and construction managers of the MetroLink Cross County line. The St. Louis County jury ruled in favor of the defendants after a three-month trial. Additionally, Metro now faces a $6 million settlement from the defendants’ countersuit.
In January, Robert Baer, the interim president of Metro, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that there would be no service cuts as a result of the $21 million legal fees, which are essentially billed to taxpayers.
St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley is expected to recommend that the County Council place a sales-tax proposal on the November ballot. Residents already pay a quarter-cent sales tax to support Metro; the sales tax increase would levy an additional quarter-cent tax.
If this idea is approved by voters, it will activate a quarter-cent sales tax that has already been approved in St. Louis city. The new money — an additional $80 million a year — would be split evenly between Metro’s operational costs and a new MetroLink route. The most likely of several routes that have been discussed is one from Clayton to Westport, an idea that would help sell the idea of the sales-tax increase to St. Louis County voters.
The sales-tax question was originally placed on the ballot in February and was then removed in the aftermath of the court decision against Metro, because it was felt that under such conditions it was unlikely to pass.
Tom Sullivan, spokesman for the Public Transit Accountability Project based in Clayton, said he suspects that the agency contrived the shortfall in light of the ballot issue.
“Creating a panic situation is in the playbook that they all work out of,” he said. “It just so happens that the county all of a sudden is going to cut Metro funding when a tax hike is being considered. If you recall, Larry Salci [Metro’s previous president] has been claiming the sky is falling since 2002 but then [in 2007] came up with a $9 million surplus.”
Tom Shrout, executive director of Citizens for Modern Transit, said Sullivan’s comments reflect a lack of knowledge about the true situation. Metro’s funding sources are being squeezed, baseline costs such as fuel prices are going up, and the agency is doing its best to manage the situation, he said.
Shrout said he thinks the ballot initiative has “a good chance” of passing. “If there’s a time that people need to invest in transit, it’s right now,” he said. Increasingly people are expressing a desire to live, work and play near transit routes, he said. “It gives people options.”
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