Phillips pushed for King County budget with no transit cuts

November 23, 2009

Summary

King County Council’s adopts balanced 2010 budget that preserves core services

Story

With Metro Transit facing a $213 million deficit over the next two years, Metropolitan King County Councilmember Larry Phillips spoke out in May on behalf of the transit-reliant communities he represents, calling for budget solutions to avoid cutting bus service. Today the County Council unanimously adopted a 2010 budget that preserves current levels of bus service for the next two years and maintains the delivery schedule for RapidRide bus rapid transit service promised under the voter-approved “Transit Now” initiative.

“At the beginning of the year, the transit picture was so bleak we were talking about catastrophic 20 percent cuts in service,” said Phillips. “The 2010 Executive Proposed Budget called for 9 percent cuts to service, but the Council, with the help of a transit audit, was able to identify additional savings and efficiencies to close the gap without cutting bus service.”

Metro’s revenue, supported primarily by the sales tax, began declining steeply last year as the global recession reached King County. Phillips, chair of the Council’s 2009 Budget Committee, led efforts to close the transit budget gap and called for a Transit Performance Audit to find long-term efficiencies for addressing what became a projected $213 million revenue shortfall in Metro’s budget for 2010-2011.

The Transit Performance Audit yielded results that will help the council to close Metro’s budget gap in the 2010-2011 biennium and narrow the projected budget gap in the 2012-2013 biennium. The cost-saving efficiencies identified in the audit which will be implemented by Metro include:

• More efficient scheduling of buses and operators, in part by reducing the amount of time buses lay over at the end of each trip.

• Scheduling bus routes based on the system as a whole, rather than the current practice of scheduling routes within one of Metro’s seven regional transit bases, which will help reduce the “deadheading” that occurs when buses return empty to their home bus base at the end of each operator’s shift.

• Increased training and use of Metro’s scheduling software to identify more opportunities where one bus and operator could more efficiently handle routes.

• Use of $40 million over the next two years from Metro’s Fleet Replacement Fund, which the Council audit revealed holds excess reserves of $105 million.

The transit budget adopted by the Council adheres to Phillips’ priorities of avoiding the threatened cut of 310,000 hours of bus service over the next two years and keeping the commitment to implement the Rapid-Ride bus rapid transit service– especially the D Line service from Ballard to Uptown and downtown Seattle along 15th Avenue NW set to debut in 2012.

To address the projected Metro budget gap in the 2012-2013 biennium and beyond, Councilmember Phillips wants to convene regional stakeholders to discuss the future of Metro Transit. The conversation would include developing a comprehensive vision for what the regional transit system should look like in the future as well as revisiting methodologies for distributing service cuts and growing service.

“Bus service is a lifeline for getting people to work and home to see their families, which is why I fought so hard for a no-service-cuts transit budget for next year,” said Phillips. “To avoid bus cuts in the future, we must come together as a region for a conversation about the future of our transit system. I believe the region will agree we should be growing our bus system rather than shrinking it.”

Additional highlights of the 2010 budget include:

• Limiting any reduction to the criminal justice system to no more than one percent from 2009 levels by making use of new legislative authority to redistribute sales tax revenues dedicated for mental illness and drug dependency programs.

• Restoring nearly $1.4 million in dedicated and general funds for programs for the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault, and for legal aid programs that help survivors obtain restraining orders and navigate the judicial system.

• Reducing the County Council’s own budget by 13 percent and cutting seven positions, four of which were filled at the start of this year. The budget for the Executive’s office has also been reduced by 10 percent.

“The economic crisis took a toll on King County’s budget this year, but we rose to the challenge by prioritizing and finding efficiencies to protect core services,” said Phillips. “More work lies ahead in ensuring we have a long term solution to keeping police and buses on the streets and a human services safety net in place for those in need.”