Mass transit in Escambia County is about to run into a
roadblock. Maybe it will only be a
detour. Could it become an Autobahn
though?
One thing is for sure, the current system is untenable and
there will be changes coming.
WHERE THINGS STAND NOW
At Tuesday’s special meeting of the BCC, the issue of
transportation employees merging into the county to become county employees was
discussed at length.
The goal for the union and the drivers was to bring Escambia
County Community Transportation (ECCT) and ECAT under the umbrella of the
county. This, had it been done, would
have allowed for enhanced pay and benefits for the ECCT drivers who currently
do not enjoy high salaries, paid sick days, or benefits that are affordable
given their low pay. ECCT drivers
provide transportation for disabled and elderly citizens that have no other
workable transportation options.
ECAT employees, by contrast, enjoy good salaries, excellent
benefits, and these employees work subject to a collective bargaining agreement that
is extremely worker friendly. Both
classes of employees currently operate under management contracts Escambia County has
in place with First Transit of Ohio.
ECCT’s contract runs out at the end of June, ECAT’s contract runs
through September 30th.
So at last Tuesday’s meeting, the BCC decided to return the
functions of ECCT back to the state via this notification of termination of services letter. This course of action
was approved by a 4-1 vote. I had hoped
we could work out a 1-year bridge contract with First Transit to do a less
hurried hand-off of this important service back to Tallahassee, however only
two of us on the Dais supported that.
Therefore, beginning July 1st, the Community Transportation
function will revert back to the state of Florida to manage. (Note, this is and has historically been a
state-run service that Escambia County had recently taken on—however with costs
approaching $2.8Million for this service alone-
sending this back to the state was a no-brainer)
sending this back to the state was a no-brainer)
Once the ECCT matter was settled, discussion turned to
ECAT. Very quickly the conversation
turned to bringing all of the drivers and employees of ECAT in-house. The BCC even momentarily had a motion and a
second on the floor to do this very thing…Then I intervened and sort of blew that
up.
In a nutshell, I stated my significant concern with this,
even though I strongly agreed that the current operation of ECAT was bloated,
costly, inefficient, and poorly constructed.
Despite this reality, I still worried about bringing ECAT drivers on to
our health plan—what would that do to our mod rates was a question I asked
immediately? The other issue, which for
me is non-negotiable, is that I would not and will not vote to bring these
drivers and employees back in house without first successfully completing (to
the complete satisfaction of the BCC) collective bargaining with the drivers’
union to reach a new more palatable agreement more in alignment with the
agreements existing county employees work under (the ones that are unionized). I simply could not, in good conscience and
for many reasons I stated at the meeting, agree to have these ECAT employees
come back to the County under the existing agreement—something has to change first.
ELIMINATE ECAT and the 4CENT LOCAL
OPTION GAS TAX?
But before we even got very far with discussions of bringing
ECAT employees in-house, one of my counterparts floated the idea of ending ECAT
altogether-- and/or --putting it’s continued operations and concomitant 4cent
gas tax before the voters via a 2018 ballot amendment! If that were not enough of an ice-water
bucket poured over the heads of ECAT attendees in the room—this idea combined
with the termination of the Community Transportation contract blew all of the remaining
wind out of their sails…It was such a draconian one-two punch, that I felt
sorry for the few ECAT drivers that had endured our marathon meeting—only to
hear this item at the end of the long evening.
At the conclusion-there was no definitive resolution to our
contract with First Transit-contrary to what some media reported. We still have them, we neither voted to end
their fixed route contract nor voted to accept their responsive bid for the
next contract-- they are still around until October while the County figures
out what to do next with this disaster it created and nurtured…
But as the discussion about ending ECAT altogether ensued
and the audience dwindled further, several things stood out to me that bear
noting here:
1.
We spend
roughly $13Million to run the service yearly
2.
We serve a little over 1 million riders yearly,
this number has declined steadily over the years
3.
We only collect about $1Million in toll box
revenue from riders (less than 10% of cost of service)
4.
We fund about $4.7Million of the operating costs
via a 4 Cent Gasoline tax everyone who purchases gasoline in Escambia County
pays
5.
Much of the additional operating costs come from
State and Federal grants
6.
Some of our revenue comes from advertisements
placed on the buses
7.
Some of our bus’ costs are/were paid from grant
monies from the Federal Government (cessation of service could require
repayment of grant monies expended on equipment)
8.
Many routes have only 1-2 riders per hour
9.
Employees at ECAT enjoy generously subsidized
health insurance policies that cost taxpayers $1.6Million yearly (several
employees receive health care subsidies that total $45,000.00 yearly for their
family plans)
10.
ECAT employees earn overtime after 8 hours
worked in a day-regardless of whether or not they work 40 hours total in a
week.
11.
Holiday pay for drivers is 2 ½ times base rate
of pay
12.
Within three years, drivers reach the top of the
pay scale at ECAT.
So, as even the most casual observer can see, this system
devours a lot of taxpayer revenue that comes from a lot of different
pots—fortunately not simply from the County’s general fund. Nevertheless, this appears from a close
examination to be a jobs program that provides rides to a small number of
users. This begs the question that I
asked at least three times at the meeting with nobody answering: “Is this a legitimate transportation system,
or is it a jobs program for drivers and employees that provide transportation
to a small number of citizens? Perhaps
that was a rhetorical question but when you serve but a fraction of 1 percent
of your County’s population daily on average-----is this really something that
can be sustained on the backs of taxpayers going forward (local, state and
federal taxpayers)?
THE ECAT/BCC/FIRST TRANIST
MODEL: RIDICULOUS STUPIDITY
The only way I can adequately describe just how ridiculously
stupid the current state of our public transportation model is requires that I
use an analogy. Imagine if you purchased
a rental property and decided you wanted someone to manage it for you? Imagine if you negotiated a generous fee for
the manager of your property to be paid that would be paid no matter how the
manager performed or if the property made or lost money or was even rented at
all? Imagine if the manager of your
property, not you, was the entity that negotiated with potential tenants
dictating every aspect of their lease, to include what the monthly rent would
be, what type of appliances (Sub-Zero appliances?) and/or amenities would be
included (or built on to the property like a pool or a hot tub?) so that the
renters would be completely satisfied?
Imagine if you were forbidden to participate at all in the negotiation
between your manager and the potential tenant—your only function would be that
you would be required to pay for any and everything that was negotiated,
regardless of cost?
This would be a train-wreck of the worst sort
imaginable—right? Of course it would
be. It’s a CLUSTER!
This is what the County has allowed to go on with ECAT and
First Transit. First Transit negotiated
the CBA and we picked up the tab. Voila,
and there you have it, a massive loss and no incentive, in reality, to make the
arrangement profitable or even less costly.
This is why this must end. It is
insanity that I doubt is duplicated successfully anywhere else in the world
outside of government. Here is the
bottom line: For this arrangement to
have ever had any chance of making any financial sense, the amount of
restitution for First Transit managing the program should have been benchmarked
to the LOGT funding plus grant funding with a small percentage for management
and overhead backed out and performance incentives for generating increased
ridership, ad revenue sharing, and the lowering of costs added in. Period.
This would have provided incentive for them to negotiate a commonsense
labor deal and to seriously look at ending non-performing routes and trimming
staff to stay within pre-defined funding constraints. But our deal with them provided zero (0)
incentive for First Transit to economize, and thus the broken system we have,
we deserve. But now I feel confident it
will be fixed. Something is going to
change, I’m confident of this. I won’t vote to continue a broken, status quo
system.
CAN THE PRIVATE SECTOR MAKE THIS
ROADBLOCK INTO A DETOUR?
Several ideas are out there for providing public
transportation more economically.
Perhaps we can be creative and think out of the box and partner with a
ride-sharing company or the taxi industry to provide subsidized transportation
to county residents in certain areas, at certain times, and for certain
reimbursement rates based on a number of factors? This is what I am going to explore over the
next several months to get our current mess of a transportation system out of
the ditch, and onto the Autobahn. This
is a complex problem but there is enough revenue to make something work. I’m working the problem, and I intend to bring
a solution. It will be a creative one, it
will be a good one, I promise.
4 comments:
So please enlighten me on the subject of E.C.C.T. Being managed by the State going to benefit its current workers who have next to nothing in benefits and Poverty level pay? Let me guess bean counters doing what they do best!!! Nothing!!! Probably also because no one in there family uses E.C.C.T. Because they have better benefits/ Insurance, well I guess we will also see how this works out for some of you board members during the next election but by then the damage will already be done and some of or a great deal of the drivers for E.C.C.T. Will be out of a job!!! Oh wait Trump will be able to help...
Darrell Hicks: The community transportation issue is a state function. The BCC took over the function a few years back due to some service complaints from local citizens. But it is my understanding that subsequently the state knee-capped us by taking back control of the most remunerative services under that umbrella--leaving us with the money losing end of the agreement. Looking ahead to a cost of almost $2.9Million for Escambia County to continue meeting this state need, we made the right decision to give this responsibility and cost back to the state. This was the only decision that made sense. Now, myself and one other commissioner tried to do a one-year deal to make a smoother transition process for handing this off to the state--but there was not a third yes vote to make that happen. So we sent the 30 day notice to the state. And staff assured us that a 30 day notice to the state was sufficient for them to pick this service back up.
Thanks for your Quick Response...
Glad you are looking over the budget. Watch out for title 6 though, no suits please
Post a Comment