Friday, July 18, 2008
The plan would shift support of the transit system from a Youngstown tax levy to a countywide sales tax.
NEW MIDDLETOWN — Mahoning County commissioners paved the way Thursday to again place a quarter-percent, five-year sales tax for the Western Reserve Transit Authority on the November ballot.
Meeting at New Middletown village administration offices for the first time, the commissioners again passed the necessary legislation to expand the WRTA to include Mahoning County and begin providing bus service in the county’s southern rural areas.
The action alters the WRTA’s five-member board now appointed by the city of Youngstown to a seven-member board with four appointed by county commissioners and three by the city. The city of Youngstown also approved the change this week and the WRTA is now free to try again in November to pass the sales tax.
James Ferraro, WRTA executive director, said he is trying to set a meeting for the WRTA board to act Thursday to place the matter on the ballot.
The sales tax, which failed in the March primary election, would shift support of the transit system from a city of Youngstown tax levy to a countywide sales tax which would bring in $7.5 million per year. Ferraro said Youngstown has been the only WRTA member since 1971, when WRTA became a public entity. Youngstown currently provides WRTA with $2.5 million annually from a property tax levy.
The WRTA, in addition, receives between $1.7 million and $2 million in federal funds annually and $150,000 from the state, down from $800,000 at one point. But reductions in state and federal funding resulted in program cuts of about 50 percent last year, and Ferraro said that as a result, ridership is down from 6,000 to about 4,000 daily.
Though only Youngstown and some suburbs have bus service, passage of the sales tax would bring public transit to the southern rural areas of Mahoning County.
Ferraro said the rural populations in the southern tier are not large enough to support a fixed route system. Instead, a “Dial-a-Ride” program would begin with 12 to 15 small buses that would transport residents on a demand basis for about $3.50 for regular customers and $1.75 for the elderly and disabled. He said such a program could begin four to five months after levy passage. He said he is also talking with Youngstown State University officials about starting a “Park and Ride” shuttle bus for YSU students from the southern tier of the county, although this program does not depend on levy passage.