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THE STARS DEBATE CONTINUES: Transit Director Takes Issue with the Viability of Saginaw's Bus System
Dear Editor;
On behalf of the STARS Board of Directors and its employee teams, I could not allow your opinion to be published without a response. I will not respond to Mr. Schmid's editorial because he has received an invitation to come in and receive further clarification on STARS ridership numbers and he has yet to respond - this despite our Board Chairperson having already responded to him in a letter with documented facts. In response to your statements made in the editorial that urges a 'no' vote, STARS will respond to each paragraph.
Paragraph 1 states that the "City of Saginaw continues to act as if it the
population it services still exists at the levels id did 20 days ago." I
would hope by now the residents of the City understand that STARS is not
a part of the City's structure. While the City was the legal authorizer for the
Authority to organize, STARS is its own governmental entity. We began at
STARS 10 years ago to tailor our service to meet the needs of this community
by purchasing smaller buses and vans and will continue to do so in the future.
Reduced ridership, Federal & State funding and most recently, the loss of the
dedicated local source of funding requires STARS to operate within its
means.
Paragraph 2 states "Readers and city leaders should also ask how they can afford
to pay a new school bond millage, and hope to pass a public safety tax or lift
the property tax cap when soaked with wasteful spending measure after another." I ask
you as one who has been a lifelong resident of this City, how a business like
yours can afford to sit back and allow a continued deterioration of the City's
infrastructure that will eventually cause your newspaper to go out of business
because no residents will be left in Saginaw to advertise in a paper that is
free now? As a
child I attended Longfellow Elementary School when it was located at
Holland & Warren Streets (The two streets were still dirt roads at the time). In
1963 we moved to Longfellow's new location on Brown Street and having visited
the school maybe two years ago, found very few improvements made to the facility
since it was first erected. Wasteful spending? I do not believe so. My
grandchildren should not have to be educated in a building that was made for a
society in the '60s.
Paragraph 3 questions (paraphrasing) why the City never has money to clean the
snow from the streets yet can afford a costly millage one year after voters
already spoke. I
believe I answered the question in paragraph 1. STARS receives no City
funds to operate the system. They cannot be held responsible for your
dissatisfaction with City services.
"Until the perpetrators behind the STARS rip-off are sitting in jail, do
not be so foolish as to give them more of your hard earned cash to squander." If the Review Magazine is supposed to be a 'freedom to speak' newspaper then clearly this magazine respects the rights of any citizen, group or even governmental body to have their day in court. An audit by an outside firm was conducted in 2004 and no wrongdoing was found. Two independent audits (one by the State Department of Treasury and the other by the County Prosecutor's office) are still being conducted. I do not feel it is fair to state that a "rip-off" has occurred, particularly while these other audits are ongoing, and especially given that the first mentioned was favorable.
I
extend to the Editor of this newspaper the same invitation I did for Attorney
Schmid: feel free to contact me at STARS; I will gladly meet with you and
explain our position with regards to public transportation in this community.
Then maybe you will be able to print an unbiased story. After receiving this letter from Mr. Payne I phoned his office requesting documentation of the rider levels that he claims currently exists. I
have also spoken with Mr. Schmid about the claims Mr. Payne asserts, as well as
past and present government leaders involved with STARS that agreed to
discuss the topic 'off the record'.
According to Mr. Schmid, he sent a letter to STARS back in November of
2004 in an effort to answer the question of how many customers the bus
system services. Finally, two months later in January 2005, he received
the documentation you reference in your letter and found it to be complete
"gibberish". After
reviewing the survey figures that you sent to me, I would have to concur with
Mr. Schmid's opinion. First, your survey that is used to make an 'estimate' of
fixed route riders makes the broad stated assumption that 'the behavior of
survey respondents represents the behavior of all STARS riders. This is a
bit broad, isn't it? I highly doubt a person incapacitated and taking the bus
to the hospital would use the service as much as a student traveling out to the
colleges.
Secondly, the number of respondents in your survey over the various periods
surveyed equals 211 riders, yet because as Mr. Schmid noted in his guest
editorial, transfers and 'rides in a typical week' from each respondent is
counted, you arrive at the figure that 1,231 rides are conducted in a
typical week. From
the people that have studied this topic that I have spoken to, it appears that
the most accurate way to arrive at true ridership numbers is by taking the
1,231 figure stated in your survey and then dividing it by 2.2
(amount of average transfers) which would actually bring a total passenger
figure closer to the range of 600 people. Of
course, all of this would be a moot point if STARS had installed
automatic counters on each bus; and one would think out of the $6 million
that STARS receives each year from its share of the state gas tax, you
would be able to make this investment. But of course, this is not the case. As
for your specific points addressed to me, I will take them in the order that
they are raised.
First, while I fully understand that STARS is not part of City
Government, it still does not negate the fact that the taxes paid for STARS
are paid strictly by residents of the City of Saginaw. The STARS
'Authority' was formed and stemmed from a plan promoted by Reed Phillips
to take the exorbitant cost of this bus system off the city books. It was
draining and creating annual deficits on the City budget so this was a
convenient way - a 'shell game' if you will - to shift the expense off the
annual process of balancing the City's budget. I have addressed the problems with the City School Building Bond millage that recently passed in prior editions of this publication; but in a nutshell, closing successful schools, merging all middle school children together in one building, regardless of levels of educational competence, and re-paving parking lots is not the solution that will improve scholastic MEAP scores.
The Review is a 'freedom to speak' publication, which is why we gladly publish your letter free of editing. As you note, two audits of STARS are currently being conducted and it would seem to make more sense to wait until the results of those audits are released before going back to taxpayers in February for yet more money.
As
for the 'outside' audit that you state occurred and found no wrongdoing, I fail
to see how any credible audit could come to this conclusion based upon the fact
that figures were used in the STARS budget based upon projections that
included passage of a county-wide millage that was never even put to a vote and
never approved to begin with!
Finally, there is the reality that even if this millage does not pass, you will
still receive 8 percent of the State of Michigan gas tax and receive
another $6 million dollars this year. Not to shabby for a system that
provides one bus for about every 40 riders. While
it is true that if your millage does not pass, those dollars could be
re-programmed to other cities with more competently run systems, but even if
that happened, would it be such a bad thing? True,
the STARS bus system might possibly have to close the plush doors of its
offices. But in the long wrong, it might be far better to start all over from
scratch. Do
not get me wrong, for I believe that every successful city has a competent
public transportation system included in its service plan. But it is not the
responsibility of city residents to pay for a bus system that services the
colleges & malls that reside outside of the city - that is a countywide
responsibility. And
while an argument can be made that the incapacitated amongst our population need
rides to hospitals, doctors, and grocery stores, currently the Commission on
Aging is already handling those services for those that request it. Finally, if we truly want to talk about the viable future of our area in these trying economic times, it might make much better sense to form one consolidated bus service between all the metropolitan areas of Saginaw, Bay City and Midland. But we all know that government bureaucrats care more about preserving their fiefdoms than servicing the public that pays the bills.
Though you might not like to hear it, Mr. Payne, it's 2005 and I sense that the
indulgent variety of antiquated thinking that created this mess is poised for a
much overdue wake-up call. |
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