Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 9131.
That word-of-mouth campaign is what General Manager Myers Rollins has to count on as November nears and The Coast's future remains in flux. He's waging his own grass-roots campaign, doing two speaking engagements each weekday and speaking to a church every weekend about the referendum.
Rollins is used to speaking about the need for money, though, because every year as Grand Strand cities and counties are preparing their budgets, he has to show up with his hand out, asking for a share.
Though ridership has increased on a variety of routes in the past few years - Route 17 at Coastal Carolina University, for example, went from 97,981 passengers in fiscal year 2008 to 193,699 passengers in fiscal year 2009 - funding from cities and counties decreased.
Last year, local funding dropped around 15 percent, or $200,000, from $1.2 million to about $1 million, which meant layoffs, reduced routes and cutbacks in the capital budget.
Not knowing how much he's going to get until the last minute every fiscal year means Rollins is no stranger to making last-minute decisions about his own budget.
He's hoping the referendum will pass and the county will take the voters' advice and give him a certain stream of money he can count on and use to leverage federal funds.
But he can't use one of the most powerful campaign tools he has - the buses themselves - because The Coast accepts public funding.
"I can only spend what I can raise independently," Rollins said. So far, he has raised $2,000, which paid for campaign signs that went up this weekend.
Fortunately for The Coast, Rollins said, his speeches seem to be working.
At a recent appearance before a group of 150 seniors, Rollins said he knew he had no votes there as soon as he saw the audience.
But once he explained the services, "the message resonated with them," he said. "As I was leaving, one of the moderators said I had just earned myself 150 more votes."
Now all he needs is for half of those who show up at Horry County polls on Nov. 2 to agree.
The referendum question asks voters simply "do you favor the funding by Horry County, in an amount not to exceed 6/10ths of a mill ($1,080,000) annually, for the operations of a regional public mass transportation provider such as Coast RTA?"
It doesn't, Rollins points out, mean people will be taxed an extra 6/10ths of a mill. The county has options if the voters favor the dedicated funding:
It could dedicate some of its current millage;
It could continue to budget some money every year for an appropriation as it does now;
It could raise taxes by 6/10ths of a mill - $2.40 a year for every $100,000 of a home's appraised value.
"There are three very strong reasons having a bus service is critical. One, we have a lot of people who cannot afford cars and car insurance, and they depend on it to keep an income coming in," said Horry County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland.
"Two: retirees. More of them, as they get older, are using their cars less and they expect a reliable bus system," she said. "The third is tourism -we will never be a world-class tourist destination without a quality, reliable public transit system. People expect it."
Gilland, long an advocate for The Coast, said the county should simply dedicate a mill, which would give the RTA a steady $2.1 million a year it could count on.
"I could leverage that into enough federal money for us to actually grow," Rollins said. The Coast's future plans include more buses and routes, including an airport express and a park-and-ride system.
Right now, the annual $4.2 million budget is only enough to maintain operations. The $1 million the county is talking about wouldn't support growth, he said, but "it's better to get in the door than to leave the door closed."
As it stands now, he said, he never knows how much money The Coast will have from year to year, and he spends 70 percent of his working time going from one municipality and group to another chasing money to run the nonprofit bus system, rather than working on increasing and improving service.
But it's not because The Coast is doing something wrong, said public transportation expert Processor Kenneth Boyer, from Michigan State University.
"Public transportation is not financially viable out of the fare box anywhere in the world," Boyer said. "London, Berlin, Paris, all those cities we admire for their public transit systems - they are all subsidized. Only a small part of their revenue comes from the fares. Once people recognize that public transportation isn't going to operate at a profit, they can begin to have a more rational conversation about it."
It's a conversation bus riders wish would have been held before this year, when cities and the county had to trim their budgets and slashed The Coast's funding enough that it had to cut routes.
That's a pinch Halverson feels three nights a week when she's got to bum rides home from work because there is no bus to take her.
"I've already been telling people to complain about the cuts," she said.
Halverson and people like her - who work for low wages and don't have cars - are just some of the people Rollins is trying to help by keeping the bus system active and convenient.
"We don't pay our service-industry workers a lot of money," Gilland said, " the workforce that built this place. A lot of them cannot afford to operate a car, but they have to get to work every day to wait tables, change beds, clean hotel rooms."
Others include the seniors who take the bus to medical appointments and to go shopping, the tourists who use the buses rather than trying to drive in an area where they are unfamiliar, veterans who take the bus to get V.A. services and the disabled who depend on transit to see their doctors.
"Public transit is a public service," Rollins said, "and it's part of the infrastructure of the county. Roads get the 1-cent Riding on a Penny money, schools get their tax money, but no such allowance has been made for the buses."
A skeptical public
Gilland said problems with the general manager before Rollins - who ended up in jail because of misuse of money - left some people not trusting that their tax money will be used responsibility, and some in the western part of the county have had to do without buses for so long, they don't really see a need for it.
Rollins said some people he has spoken to object to paying for buses because, they say they don't use them.
"I've never, in six years, called the police, called the fire department or called EMS," he said. "But I pay for them every year. That's what you do in a civilized society."
Besides, he said, millage money pays for school buses, yet most people who pay taxes don't use those, either.
Boyer said people who use buses subsidize drivers, too.
"Let's say you don't pay for parking at your mall. Stores have to charge higher prices to pay for parking services, and people who ride the bus to the mall pay those prices, too, even though they aren't using the parking lots," he said.
Others object because they say they see empty buses in the mornings that should be full.
Rollins said people often don't understand that because the Coast hub is in Conway, the buses have to get to where their routes start in the mornings and get back to the hub at night with no riders - they are out of service at that point.
When buses are running regular, reliable routes, as they do at Coastal Carolina University, they are full and ridership is growing.
"I can't meet the demand at CCU. Those buses are packed," Rollins said.
"Three years ago, I had a bus going from Conway to Myrtle Beach every hour, and ridership was great."
As it is, The Coast RTA has served 576,908 passengers so far this year, up 35 percent from last year, though it has lost much of its funding from Myrtle Beach and Conway. Horry County, dropped its funding by $200,000 to $500,000 this fiscal year.
Other times, when people see only a few heads through the bus windows, they might not realize that bus could be providing paratransit - taking nonambulatory people to hospital or doctor appointments. It's a special service the bus system provides.
"That bus is a lifeline for those people," he said.
If the nonbinding referendum doesn't pass this fall and the county doesn't dedicate funding, he said, he's not giving up.
He'll keep chasing money.
"I've had three job offers and I have not taken them.
"I'm here. This is a quality-of-life issue for me, too," Rollins said. "I have one of the few jobs where, every day, I get to see the fruits of my efforts."
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.
No comments:
Post a Comment