Voters in many parts of Kalamazoo County will see a transit tax proposed on their ballots on August 4. A new authority is poised to take over transit operations if the tax passes. But that authority comes with new district boundaries, and not every bus that runs now is in.
The tax is a millage that would help pay for a major service expansion throughout the county. It would also help fund existing bus routes. If voters approve it, property owners in the new district would see a charge of up to 0.75 mills on their tax bills for the next five years.
Why up to 0.75 mills?
“Everyone asks that when they see that,” says Sean McBride, the Executive Director of the Central County Transportation Authority or CCTA.
“If we don’t implement the full service right away that we could delay levying the full amount,” he explains.
But McBride says if the CCTA gets the millage, the authority does plan a number of service expansions as early as the fall of 2016. That includes Sunday bus service and later hours for some routes. And some buses would come around more often.
“Most of our routes are either 30 minutes or an hour between buses that come and we want to start to make it more frequent,” he says.
There’s a big organizational change behind this millage. Over several years, the state has passed a series of laws that have allowed the county to create the new authority – the CCTA – and a new service district. McBride says it reflects a shift in thinking about the best way to do public transportation.
“People’s public transit needs aren’t defined by jurisdictional boundaries. Our population centers, our job centers, our retail centers are throughout our area,” he says.
Locally, people have been moving toward the edges of the service area since at least 2000. CCTA Board Chair Linda Teeter says the service has to respond. The new authority’s goal is public transportation with a regional span, run by the county rather than one city within it. And Teeter says the CCTA is considering all sorts of options for the future.
“What about some commuter shuttle services that are loops around the system? What about services to Richland and Galesburg and Schoolcraft et cetera?”
The map the CCTA drew included each of the county’s major urban areas. But local governments can opt some or all of their precincts out. And some of them did.
Pavilion Township did not join the new district. Neither did Texas Township. Part of Oshtemo stayed out too. Pavilion Township supervisor Patrick White says with regular bus service to only the mobile home park, it wasn’t a good deal.
“We didn’t want people that were not going to be available to the bus service to be paying it in the taxes on their tax bill,” he says.
The CCTA has struck a deal with Texas Township and Kalamazoo Valley Community College that will preserve bus service to KVCC. It’s still in talks with Oshtemo about a route that runs west of US 131, through opted-out-precinct territory.
Both the CCTA and Pavilion Township say they’re done talking. But transit might make an agreement with the mobile home park. Officials at the park say it doesn’t have to be a fixed route, as long as people can get around. Rider George Vallette agrees.
“I think I speak for everybody that rides or takes advantage of the system. As long as we have some kind of suitable bus service we’re good to go,” he says.
Does that mean if the CCTA doesn’t get the millage, Pavilion Township would keep its current route? No, says McBride. He says if the millage failed the whole system would suffer.
“Our service to the community would be cut back drastically and it wouldn’t only affect the fixed-route bus system. It would impact our Metro County Connect system too, the demand-response system,” he says.
McBride says it’s not just tax revenue at stake. One-half of the district’s budget comes from state and federal grants. McBride says transit doesn’t get those grants unless there’s a local buy-in. He says that’s why the CCTA has left itself time to go back to voters next year if the millage doesn’t pass in August.
