The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) board directed their anger over the recently announced BC Transit cuts at the transit company’s Myrna Moore during a corporate and administrative services committee meeting March 26.
“We’re not going to kill you. We know that you’re the messenger. But we will make you suffer a little,” said Elphinstone director Lorne Lewis at the meeting.
In March BC Transit announced the Coast’s three-year-expansion plan, which included half-hour bus service on the highway, was scrapped due to a lack of funding from the provincial government.
The change came as a surprise to the regional district, which is in a funding partnership with the province to provide bus service on the Sunshine Coast. The SCRD pays for 53.31 per cent of the regular transit budget and the province pays for 46.69 percent.
At the SCRD’s request, Moore came to the committee meeting on March 26 to explain how the announced changes will impact SCRD bus service.
Although the three-year transit expansion plan has been put on hold, Moore said vehicle replacements will continue to be done as needed and that the Coast could expect to get four new buses in the coming months.
However, she said the need to keep budgets flat will likely necessitate some service cuts in the future.
This year’s budget has been approved at $2.5 million and it is expected to be “maintained” for the next two years.
“So basically in the year one coming up for 2015/16 [the budget year starts and ends in April] that does include inflationary lifts, but it includes no service expansions,” Moore said, noting there is no allowance for inflation in the following two years.
The transit authority is now working on a “two-stream approach” to find the savings needed to balance their budgets in the future.
“We will look for any operational/administrative efficiencies to help protect current service levels,” Moore said, adding the second approach would be to look at possible service reallocations or reductions.
“For the next two weeks we’ll be working with Rob [Williams, manager of SCRD transit] and his group and looking at options.”
The board also wanted to look at options to save service expansion plans on the Coast, with some suggesting they seek other sources of funding to top up the coffers and make half-hour highway service possible.
Moore said that even if the board could come up with more money, BC Transit couldn’t use it unless the province also gave more funds as per the funding formula.
“The way the cost sharing legislation works, even if you were to go and find another funding source that would come back to help you, in terms of your revenue, that would still come back to you in lowering your share, in terms of a gas tax, for example,” Moore said.
“That does not come back to the provincial funding percentage, and so basically the provincial funding is set at its dollar value for those three upcoming years. So in terms of revenue sources, I can’t speak to any other revenue sources that could add to the provincial side.”
Directors then debated the possibility of seeking legislative changes from the province to allow other sources of funding to make the expansion possible.
After much discussion, the board decided to send the issue to a future infrastructure services committee meeting to develop next steps.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff here saying ‘let’s move forward on this,’” noted Roberts Creek director Mark Lebbell, who showed Moore numerous reports and studies done in the past few years that all call for improved transit service on the Coast.
“There’s very little in my mind on the Sunshine Coast that can have as positive an influence in terms of our economy, our culture and ecologically as improved public transit … I don’t want to see this fall off the map.”
