The North Central Regional Transit District could receive $175,000 in funding for two new buses courtesy of the state legislature, but was otherwise shut out from capital outlay funds.
That was the message New Mexico Government Affairs lobbyist Scott Scanland, who lobbied on behalf of the District in the Roundhouse, told the District Board of Directors at its monthly meeting March 7.
“There’s a lot of legislative love out there for us,” he said. “We just need to show why the love needs to be more loving.”
Scanland said that despite support from state Representatives Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe; Carl Trujillo, D-Santa Fe; and Jim Trujillo, D-Santa Fe, the District had trouble garnering support from other legislators who were concerned the money would be spent out of their districts.
Scanland said the District needed to do a better job of convincing legislators that funding the District is for the good of all of Northern New Mexico and not just Española.
A Feb. 12 list of capital outlay requests shows the District requested $538,000 for fleet replacement, $90,000 to pave the fleet parking area at the Jim West Transit Center and $50,000 to install an emergency electrical generator at the transit center.
After the requests were considered by the legislature, the only capital outlay money the District was approved to receive was a significantly reduced $175,000 appropriation for fleet replacement. District Executive Director Anthony Mortillaro, who indicated the capital outlay would be used to purchase two new buses, acknowledged there was one last hurdle to clear.
“Hopefully it doesn’t see the governor’s veto pen, so we’ll cross our fingers,” he said.
An infrastructural improvement in the District’s legislative priorities list but not in the final capital outlay requests, was a request to fund a new fleet maintenance building.
While no money will be going to the District this year for that project, Vice President John Jarrard, of construction management company Huitt-Zollars, presented preliminary plans for the structure.
His presentation slides displayed a 14,354-square-foot structure that included four repair bays, offices, breakrooms and lockers for drivers.
Jarrard said there was plenty of potential for the 20-acre lot the District owns. In addition to the maintenance facility, the preliminary plans also featured sketches for surrounding fueling stations, fleet parking and a new Park and Ride lot.
“Preliminary” was a key word in the presentation as the District currently does not have funding set aside for the project. Jarrard provided an estimated cost of $2.6 million and said the project could be completed within a year-and-a-half of approval.
Mortillaro said the District hoped to obtain federal funding for the project through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant. In the meantime, the District would have to find a way to carve out funding from its fiscal year 2015 budget to fund the rest of the development process.
“It is something that we’ll probably have to fund 100 percent in the design part,” Mortillaro said.
The Board discussed other items at their meeting, including:
• As final Board approval of the District’s service plan update was pushed back to the April meeting, District transit and facilities operations director Mike Kelly received informal approval for his suggested changes to the District’s paratransit and on demand services.
While Kelly didn’t recommend any changes to the proposed paratransit route discussed in previous meetings, he did say District officials agreed to a $2 fee for door-to-door paratransit service.
Kelly also suggested a slight expansion of the on demand service to include La Puebla and Arroyo Seco. With relatively low populations, he said it would be more cost-efficient than adding stops to those areas.
Santa Fe Commissioner and Board member Miguel Chavez asked Kelly when the new paratransit and on demand services would be implemented. Kelly said he couldn’t provide a definitive timeline, but set a goal of February 2015.
“That particular portion is still wet clay right now,” Kelly said.
• As the months wear on, the District’s monthly finance reports begin to sound like a broken record — the gross receipts tax revenue from Rio Arriba and Los Alamos Counties to the District underperformed, but Santa Fe and Taos Counties made up the difference.
While Santa Fe and Taos Counties couldn’t produce enough gross receipts revenue to meet the District’s projected revenue, the December gross receipts figures revealed those two counties helped the District make up some ground.
Rio Arriba and Los Alamos Counties came in at 78 percent and 86 percent below projected revenue, respectively. Santa Fe and Taos Counties distributed an average of
4 percent more than budgeted projections.
Ultimately, the District received $606,606 for the month of December in gross receipts revenues, or 98 percent of their $619,551 projection.
The report states the District expended
49 percent of its budget, largely thanks to contractual payments to the city of Santa Fe and Los Alamos County being due quarterly instead of monthly.
Before concluding her report, District Finance Director Glenda Aragon said the finance officials were starting to work on putting together the District’s fiscal year 2015 budget.