Tag Archives: deficit

Another Fiscal Emergency for AC Transit?

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by current events, event, transportation • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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AC Transit will hold a public hearing on May 25 at 5:00 pm at the offices at 1600 Franklin Street in Downtown Oakland to discuss declaring a fiscal emergency for the third consecutive year.

According to California Beat:

Calling a fiscal emergency would allow AC Transit to cut costs by eliminating service, implementing hiring freezes and reorganize administrative expenses without undergoing environmental reviews that would delay the process.

The agency is facing a $14.9 million shortfall in the coming fiscal year and warns it will face a steeper funding shortage by the end of 2012.

In October, the agency cut 13 percent of bus service to nearly all East Bay communities and hiked fares for riders. This month, the Board approved a ten-year fare increase plan that will increase the base fare incrementally to meet inflation rates.

You can read the entire story here.

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The AC Transit Board voted last week to raise basic bus fares from $2.00 to $2.10, to take effect August 1.

According to Mercury News:

The increase, however, is a tiny fraction of what is needed, district officials said. It will raise just $2.4 million annually to reduce a projected deficit of $21 million in the next fiscal year, according to a district staff report.

As a result, another round of service cuts are likely to be needed within the next 12 to 18 months, King said. AC Transit cut service twice last year.

You can read the entire story here.

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Berkeley Might End Curbside Recycling Program

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by local • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(Image credit – City of Berkeley)

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On Tuesday evening, March Berkeley City Council heard an analysis of the recycling program managed by the Ecology Center.

According to East Bay Express,

The city paid the southern California firm Sloan Vasquez $85,000 to figure out how to plug the deficit. The consultants said in taking over the recycling, the city should replace the Ecology Center’s two-person trucks with one-person trucks, except on hilly and narrow roads where one employee working alone would be dangerous. Reducing the number of drivers and overhead incurred by the nonprofits would save millions of dollars, they said. They also recommended layoffs in the city’s solid waste division.

Currently, the nonprofit Ecology Center manages a city contract to pick up paper, glass and plastic. The Conservation Center, also a nonprofit organization, is charged by the city with processing and buying back recyclables. Urban Ore, a for-profit business, salvages and sells reusable items. City workers pick up garbage, and green and food waste. … …

The point where the city and nonprofit workers agreed was that outside profit-making companies such as Waste Management should not have the commercial franchises, as they do now, to pick up recyclables from Alta Bates Hospital, UC Berkeley, Bayer Corporation, Kaiser Permanente, Pacific Steel Casting and more. Ricky Jackson, a rep for the government employees’ union, said the city could make money taking on this work.

Councilmembers want more input from the nonprofits, city workers, and the Zero Waste Commission at their March 22, 2011 meeting.

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UPDATE: There is a detailed report on many of the speakers and comments from Tuesday’s Council meeting from the Berkeley Daily Planet (always to be taken with a grain of salt) here.

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To give some more background on concerns about the study, on Tuesday Berkeleyside carried a story about the report on recycling in Berkeley:

An independent report commissioned by Berkeley to assess how it could save money on its waste and recycling operations has recommended that the city terminate its contract with the Ecology Center which started the nation’s first curbside recycling program here nearly 40 years ago. The report’s proposals have been challenged and its methodology criticized by the Ecology Center, as well as by at least one third-party waste management expert.

Concerns about the study include the following:

[Martin Bourque, Executive Director of the Ecology Center] says he sees significant problems with the assumptions made in the Sloan Vazquez report, principally that the city would be able to save money by bringing operations in-house. Citing two specific examples he says: “The city waste supervisor is already overburdened and they are suggesting doubling his workload. And, at the moment, the city doesn’t carry any overheads but that will increase their costs by 26%.”

Bourque also has issues with the way the consultation process was handled — the consultants chose the day the Ecology Center was rolling out its new recycling split-carts last October to observe the program in action, which according to Bourque was atypical of its service. He adds that offers made by the Ecology Center to meet with the consultants or share data were declined.

Berkeley resident Steven Sherman, who is President of Applied Compost Consulting and has consulted for the city on waste matters, believes the Sloan Vasquez study has “terrible policy implications for the City”. In a March 3 letter to the Council he outlines why he believes the City should not accept the report’s analysis as valid.

Berkeley’s Zero Waste Commission has also condemned the study, describing it, in a February 28 report, as ”incomplete and missing information, cost-benefit analyses, and a lack of an adequate and inclusive process”.

You can read the entire article on Berkeleyside here.

Update on AC Transit Cuts

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by current events, transportation • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Last night, AC Transit’s board of directors voted unanimously to slash night and weekend bus service in an effort to reduce the projected $40 million budget deficit.

Thirty-nine “minor” weekend routes are on the chopping block, but most major weekend routes will be left intact.

Four of the six all night buses will disappear. The only surviving lines will be the 800 and the 801.

According to Berkeleyside, 9 weekend services will be eliminated in Berkeley – the 1R, 7, 12, 25, 49, 52, 65, 67 and the Transbay F.

Another decision on paratransit services was postponed.

The full set of cuts should be posted on the AC Transit site soon.

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Noelle has previously written about the challenges facing AC Transit – AC Transit Cuts (5/25/10), AC Transit Cuts, Part 2 (6/2/10), and AC Transit Cuts, Part 3 (7/8/2010).

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AC Transit Cuts, part three

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by current events, editorials, transportation • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

This post is part of our coverage on water, waste, energy and transportation issues of interest to the local Bay Area community.

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Here is a check-in on the ongoing budget crisis within AC Transit, the East Bay’s bus system:

Despite months of negotiations and meetings, AC Transit and the union representing most of its workers,  the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), Local 192 have so far been unable to reach a mutually acceptable strategy to close the $56 million deficit facing the agency by the close of 2011.

June 30th represented a milestone in the negotiations- that was the day that the ATU’s previous contract terms expired. The process has nonetheless stagnated. AC Transit Director Greg Harper is quoted in the AC Transit News as commenting, “I think we are definitely at an impasse because the union has so far offered less than 50 percent of what is needed to close the budget deficit.”

The Agency is looking to recoup 8 to 9 percent of employment costs in the new contract. The grim financial scenario has already resulted in fee hikes for riders, service cuts, layoffs, and 5% salary cuts for the board of directors. With a 75% share of the operating budget being allocated to employee costs, the Board of Directors is maintaining that shortfalls cannot be met without some concessions from the union.

The declared impasse and revised terms of employment, effective July 18, have been laid out by the Board of Directors. It remains uncertain if a strike will be avoided.