Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 07/20/1994Draft minutes to be approved by the Board at the August 17, 1994 meeting. TRANSPORTATION BOARD MEETING MINUTES JULY 20, 1994 5:40-7:00 P.M. FOR REFERENCE: Chair - Colin Gerety 229-2523 Vice Chair -- Dave Lemesany 482-7854 Council Liaison - Will Smith 223-0425 Staff Liaison - Rick Ensdorff 221-6608 Board Secretary -- Cindy Scott 221-6608 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Alan Beatty, Sara Frazier, Colin Gerety, Dolores Highfield, Paul Perlmutter, and Paul Valentine. BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT: Mark Egeland, Elizabeth Hudetz, and Dave Lemesany. STAFF/COUNCIL PRESENT: Rick Ensdorff; Cindy Scott; Greg Byme - Director Community Planning & Environmental Services; Alan Krcmarjk - Budget; Tom Frazier, Carolyn Harmes - Transfort GUESTS PRESENT: Kathleen Reagan, Lee Winfield, and Nancy York The meeting was called to order at 5:40 p.m. AGENDA: A. ACTION ITEMS 1. Approval of Minutes Introduction of New Board Member - Paul Perlmutter B. PUBLIC COMMENT C. DISCUSSION ITEMS 1.Transportation Funding Sources - Alan Krcmarik 2. Paratransit Fares - Tom Frazier & Carolyn Harmes 3. Other Business A.1. APPROVAL OF MINUTES There was a motion, a second, and a unanimous vote to approve the June 15, 1994 Transportation Board minutes as presented. Chair Gerety introduced and welcomed Paul Perlmutter, recently appointed to the Board. All present introduced themselves. B. PUBLIC COMMENT Lee Winfield stated that he would like to congratulate everyone on the Dial -A -Ride program. His feeling is that the more people take Dial -A -Ride (DAR) and Care -A -Van (CAV) for granted, the less they are going to appreciate it. A fee should be charged up front because people who get something for nothing don't ever appreciate it. He is very much in favor of a $1.50 fee for DAR. Kathleen Reagan stated her agreement with Mr. Winfield's comments. C.1. TRANSPORTATION FUNDING SOURCES - ALAN KRCMARIK Mr. Krcmarik passed out a spreadsheet entitled "Funding Sources for Transportation Needs". The total city revenue projected for this year is about $162 million. He then went through each one of the funds and identified the expenditures that come out of each one for transportation related items. General fund is the largest fund and by itself is about $45 million. There is $1.7 million for Engineering; $1.2 million for Street Oversizing and $4.5 in reserves. He concluded that about 1/4 is spent on transportation issues. Chair Gerety asked what our choices are to replace funds if we decided not to go with a sales tax, but rather try to fund transportation more directly from various user fees? Mr. Krcmarik responded that there used to be a transportation utility fee, it was charged to all properties within the city, based on front footage. It was designed to bring in about $500,000 a year. The year after it was implemented, a suit was brought against the city and eventually the city council decided we didn't really need it after all. Chair Gerety commented that there must be a way to get revenues that are directly associated with use of the system. Obviously, one is the gasoline tax, which is statewide and in order to get local funds from that you would have to change stated law. The basic principle is that people who use the system should be paying for it and to give an incentive to providers to try other ways to get people to their shops. Parking spaces seems to be one way that you can associate use of the system with some quantifiable numbers. It's fairly easy to count parking spaces. Mr. Krcmarik asked how these parking fees would be collected. Gerety responded perhaps as you would property taxes, on a yearly basis. There may be other ways to do it. -2- 0 0 Ensdorff stated that you can charge a user's fee, and that more than likely we can figure something out on public parking. Private parking is more complex. We are getting more information all the time on what is becoming known as "congestion pricing". Because we are going to eventually lose $5.6 million once the Choices '95 is over, Chair Gerety stated that something has to be done to replace this money. Chair Gerety stated that he would like a follow up to this item. He would like actual proposals from the city with actual numbers; how much money would it generate, what would we have to do to generate the kind of money that we are currently getting out of Choices '95 and street maintenance. Proposals where the tax is associated with a user fee. Ensdorff said he and Alan will try to have some material prepared in time for the next meeting to follow up on this. C.2. PARATRANSIT FARES Mr. Frazier informed the Board that since this is an advisory board to Council and Transfort is taking the fare presentation to Council on August 16, this is the Board's opportunity to see the work that has been done on fares and either provide recommendation or say "no recommendation". He would like to provide the Board with all the information in the event they would like to make a recommendation to the City Council. Mr. Frazier gave an update on DAR. On an average they thought there would be about 42,000 rides per year. What is projected is in excess of 60,000. If we continue to go on the existing trend with this ridership pattern that we are experiencing, we were looking at about 134 per day, but the projections indicate there are over 200 a day. This will mean that we'll be about $190,000 short in covering the revenues and expenditures. In essence, the reason behind that is that due to the increased ridership, our cost is still around the $12 per trip, but we are getting a lot of rides. He went over some findings such as 64% of the trips are for individuals who are ADA eligible and there are about 2,000 customers that have been identified in the urban area -to give you a relationship, that was below 1,000 in 1993. It has almost doubled the numbers of individuals who are using the service today. Almost 76% of the individuals (not total rides) are elderly, 60 and over. This is important because these are people who are impacted by this and if there are limitations to ADA only, it could have a significant impact on the elderly. They have had several presentations to get public comment. Mr. Frazier then went through a flip chart presentation giving information on various alternatives, revenue sources, Dial -A -Ride, Care -A -Van, etc. Some of the feedback so far is that people want to see annual passes based on income and .50 cents is the most popular fare people have suggested. A lot of people support .35 cents and $15 annual passes, but the concept of having a an annual pass and having it based on a sliding scale was extremely important. For 1994 if $1 a trip was charged, they would be short $167,000. If $1.50 was charged, it would be $156,000 short; if a variable rate of $1.50 for ADA/$1.75 for non-ADA eligible, it would be $150,000 short. No matter which option you take for 1994 or 1995, it will still be insufficient to make up the difference. One of the scenarios to break even, would be to charge the seniors $4.00 per trip. This is highly questionable though. -3- Board Member Perlmutter asked for clarification of elderly/ADA eligible and who they should call for service. Valentine stated that he agrees with the $1.50 for ADA eligible and the $4.00 per ride for the elderly. A taxi ride would probably be about $6.00, so they would still save money. The Board felt they needed more time to process the information given today before feeling comfortable with making a recommendation. They asked Mr. Frazier if he would come to a meeting of the board on August 3. He agreed. The board will meet on that date to discuss Dial -A -Ride and the other item on tonight's agenda - US 287/CO 14 Corridor. The meeting will be held at 330 S. College at 5:30 p.m. C.3. OTHER BUSINESS Frazier suggested that a sentence be added to the memo regarding carpooling that says we would like a response/proposal back from them on this concept. Ensdorff stated that it is pretty evident that the City Manager has decided to restructure the Transportation Department. There will be a new service area of transportation elements that would include Transportation, Transfort, Engineering and Streets. This will be coming this fall. For this group it will probably mean more direct relations on some of those other things such as street maintenance and engineering things. He also noted that there is definitely money in the Manager's recommended budget for the pedestrian plan, bikeway improvements and a new Transportation Planner position. There being no other business, the meeting adjourned at 7:00 p.m. 0(-u Cindy L. cott, Secretary -4-