MV Transit set to put brakes on South Shore bus service
Publisher’s note: Updated May 28, 2010, at 11:55am.
By Kathryn Reed
MV Transit may walk away from its three-year contract to provide bus service to the South Shore of Lake Tahoe if something isn’t done about the more than $2 million it is owed.
The Fairfield-based company entered the contract Aug. 1, 2009. On May 25, the firm gave South Tahoe Area Transit Authority – the coalition it has the contract with – a 60-day termination notice.
Transit on the South Shore has hit a serious roadblock.
The company also informed employees things might soon change. This must be done via the WARN Act. WARN kicks in when 50 or more jobs are eliminated or an entire plant is about to be shuttered. WARN mandates employees be given at least 60 days notice.
MV has 70 employees on the South Shore. Management is having one-on-one meetings with employees to let them know what is going on.
“We’ve never been current in our billing. It’s just gotten worse,” Thom McAleer, MV general manager, told Lake Tahoe News.
A payment plan was in place, but the deficit kept growing.
McAleer is hopeful things can be worked out so MV continues to operate BlueGo, the name of the local bus system.
“This is a fragile situation for MV. MV has never walked away from a contract. We don’t take it lightly,” McAleer said. “But at some point we need to protect ourselves. We need to have assurance that future billings will be current and there will be a solution to the outstanding billing and how they will pay the billing that is in arrears.”
Stacy Dingman, spokeswoman for the STATA board, said the notice to end the contract surprised her.
“Ideally, we will resolve our issues and it will be business as usual except it will be a different operation model that we can afford,” Dingman said. “If we can’t resolve our issues, STATA would operate (the system). Our intention is to flawlessly as possible continue the operation. We will have to make some service changes.”
When MV started it was contracted to provide 96,000 hours of service a year. That has been reduced to 67,000 hours. Whoever operates BlueGo, the Nifty 50 Trolley and the ski shuttles in the future will likely have even fewer hours.
This also means riders will have to adapt to another schedule change with fewer options. Dingman wants riders to have input into future changes.
The STATA board will meet Friday in closed session to discuss the MV situation. Its next regular meeting is June 4 at the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency office in Stateline.
MV first came on board as a temporary operator when ATM abruptly left a couple years ago. Then MV was awarded a long-term contract.
John Andoh was the transit administrator until earlier this year when he was let go by the STATA board. The evaluation committee recommended MV be hired.
Dingman said Andoh was approving expenditures the board knew nothing about. Andoh said that isn’t true, that he had been updating the board and had asked MV to defer payments based on a letter dated June 2009. STATA has no reserve fund. It was operating on a cash in, cash out basis.
Another money issue is all the costs associated with getting MV in place because of the disarray ATM left the transit garage in, the buses not all running and other unforeseen expenses.
When it comes to income, most of the grants are for buses, not operating costs. Ridership is down, so the fare box is far from full. The entities that make up STATA – South Lake Tahoe, El Dorado and Douglas counties, Heavenly Mountain Resort, the Stateline casinos and a few others – subsidize the transit operation.
The board approved a cost containment plan in the last year, but McAleer believes it did not go far enough. Nonetheless, he said MV wants to keep operating on the South Shore. The company just wants to be paid for the service it’s providing.
Dingman said under no circumstances is the public bus system going away. The need is there and for it to not exist would create more problems, she said.
“It’s not about tourism as much as it’s about residents and the people who are transit dependent,” Dingman said of why BlueGo will continue on.
Please remove these inefficient, lane-hogging, cash-hungry buses from the roads. If the ski areas wish to operate ski buses, let them do so themselves. Stop picking the taxpayers’ pockets for something that is so little utilized.
Just Borrow some money from project one, pay off the debts.
Casino workers can ride casino shuttle for free,up ,down 50.
Park the go blue forget about it till the depression over.
Why am I not surprised that MV is giving the Board of Directors notice? The Board should have known this was coming as a result of the deficit growing larger and larger since January 2008.
The BlueGO Transit Administrator spending authority was $5,000 per the purchasing policy adopted by the same Board in August 2008. Anything beyond that required the Treasurer approval or the Board approval. Stacy’s Dingman’s claim of the Transit Administrator approving expenses while the Board goes unnotice is not correct. The President and Treasurer signs the checks and reviews the warrent log submitted by the Accoutant. The Transit Administrator had no direct relationship to the money. The Board has been aware of the transition costs since January 2009. See BlueGO Transit Administrator reports dating back to Jan 2009 in the board agenda packets online at http://www.bluego.org/board.aspx.
In addition, review the committee packets from the transit operations and maintenance committee as well as the administration, finance and marketing committee – a committee that Stacy Dingman sits on and then note that this matter was discussed then. It was not until July 2009 when the Board started to take an interest on dealing with this when it was mentioned by me that we are in a hugh deficit and MV wanted an amendment to the agreement to pay the deficit overtime.
TRPA Finance from February 2008 to until March 2009 when it was requested a temporary accountant to be hired in March 2009 was lackluster at best. The books were in disarray and due to budget reductions, TRPA moved the accountant to Transportation Team and the Finance Director left in November 2008 when the ATM transition was going through.
There was no close monitoring of the books by TRPA or STATA. Finally the Board agreed to hire an Accountant dedicated to STATA which did not take place until August 2009 which has worked very hard to get the books back in order and in an understandable state while trying to keep buses on the road.
It should be noted that the Transit Adminsitrator did not recommend MV. The Board of Directors selected MV through a competitive process after reviewing bids from First Transit, MV and Silverado Stages in April 2009. Stacy Dingman, Rick Angelocci, Allen Coleman, Anna Hastie among others sat on a panel on scored these proposals. The Transit Administrator did not participate in the scoring. The evaluation committee recommended MV which went to the Board in June 2009 and again in August 2009. In the interim contract selection, again, a committee created by the Board selected MV over First Transit and El Camino Trailways in October 2008. The Transit Adminsitrator did not participate in the scoring of the proposals either. Please view minutes and staff reports from November 2008, June 2009 and August 2009 for more details on the selection of MV.
STATA’s financial condition has been known by the Board since Janaury 2008 hence route changes in May 2009, September 2009 and December 2009. Difficulties arose from grant reimbursements, member agencies not paying on time (i.e. City of South Lake Tahoe, Horizon and El Dorado County), Heavenly not contributing as spelled out in the Participation Agreement and having too much service on the road because certain Board Members wanted service in certain areas.
Lastly, It was suggested and advocated many times to the Board of Directors that the MV agreement needed to be renegociated. This includes a reduction in the fixed costs which conisits of salaries. The General Manager (McAleer) makes $105,000 per year and the Maintenance Manager makes $80,000 per year for a 40 bus operation. This is very unusally high in comparison to what other GMs may make. This is even more than public sector GMs. When alternative proposals to reduce the fixed costs as well as these salaries were suggested, Anna Hastie and Stacy Dingman at the Board Meeting of June 2009 stated in that this was not what the Board wanted to see. (Dingman and the GM are friends outside of STATA). Service is being cutback at the expense of these high salaries and benefits. The Board also did not follow the original RFP in relation to revenue vehicle service hours for the system and allowed for gate to gate hours which means STATA is responsible for the cost of buses leaving and arriving at the yard vs. paying for time when the bus is only in service. This also increased costs which were not planned. See http://www.bluego.org/documents/BlueGO_August_2009_Packet.pdf
Mr. Andoh, go away please…
Anybody else find this story way too familiar when you think about our last bus company once TRPA got involved in yet another project they should just stay out of?
David
It’s laughable that Mr.Andoh, the former transit administrator, excuses himself from any role in the current deficit situation at STATA. As the administrator shouldn’t he be aware that expenses are exceeding total revenue, before it becomes a crisis. Mr. Andoh is quick to blame the STATA board of directors, but if Mr. Andoh was aware of the “growing deficit” why don’t board meeting minutes reflect Mr. Andoh;s early and repeated warning to the board.
The board of directs and Mr. Andoh share responsibility for the current situation.
The bus system is a valuable addition to the region. Although, I couldn’t let Mr. Andoh excuse himself without comment, it’s time to find a solution and quit trying to place blame.
John Andoh may not have the best motives for making his comments, but that does not mean his comments should be ignored!! STATA, as an organization that is receiving public funds, should respond to some of his accusations! For instance are they using public funds to put friends into high-paying jobs?
For years we all noticed the buses run empty.
Now that summer here just take a honest view of the people you see riding that stupid trolley .
Really, that driver just rides around alone 98% of the time and we pay for it.
This town has lost it’s identity from the wild cat pipe dreams of the wealthy few that have ruin this town.
The airport a waste, the garage a waste, and the world destination is just too flat butt funny to mention.
Lets try to get people from within a 1000 miles would be a good start,all that Disneyland crap hasn’t flown yet and by the looks of the people in charge it’s already a crash landing of assassinated
ides sure to fail.
The Romans were not the smartest humans alive but they sure in the hell had their streets in good working order before they built Rome.
Here it’s ass backwards.
Mr. Andoh did the best job that he can do. That poor man used to work long hard hours to attempt to fix BlueGo with not much help or even support from this STATA Board that claims to not know about expenditures. I used to see him on the bus going home at 1 a.m. in the morning.
Tahoegal you really should go away – you probobly never been on a bus so you don’t know what riders like me are going through since Mr. Andoh left.