This is a file photo of an Albany Transit System bus. The city wants to add four buses to its fleet.
Albany wants to expand its public transit system to serve more people. And for that, it wants to buy more buses, a plan the city council approved on Wednesday night.
Approved it yes, but not by much. The vote to buy four new buses for more than $1.9 million was 4-2, with Mike Sykes and Rich Kellum voting no.
The vote was on authorizing the purchase and to waive competitive bidding so the city can take advantage of cooperative procurement program between ODOT and New Flyer of America, a bus manufacturer.
Albany plans to buy two 35-foot buses for $963,696 for the Albany Transit System and two 40-foot buses for the city-operated Transit Loop program for $973,696.
Chris Bailey, the director of public works operations, explained that the additional buses probably won’t be ready until late in 2021, and that they will be needed to carry out the city’s plans to expand the routes and hours of operations of Albany’s rudimentary public transit program.
Ridership on the system is “really, really low” — in Bailey’s words — at the moment because of the coronavirus epidemic. But the city has plans to improve the system to make it more useful to more people and thus attract more passengers. The capacity of the Loop system, which serves LBCC and other points, is to be doubled, and ATS plans to extend its hours and expand its routes.
The system has six buses now, all within their planned service lives and not yet ready for replacement. Money for the new ones comes mostly from federal and state transit grants.
Kellum questioned the need for vehicles of that size, saying he keeps seeing mostly empty buses. Bailey replied that the city purchase is based on peak-hour demand. Still, Kellum said, “The optics are awful.”
What about the budget problems the city faces? The state and federal bus money is designated for transit and can’t be spent for anything else, the council was told. (hh)
Are you kidding? No one knows at this point how the future of mass transit, or mass anything for that matter, will pan out. Why in the world would it not be prudent to simply wait and see rather than make this decision now? Why is there aways the scent of corruption in the air? Kellum is correct, the optics are awful
Subsidies make ATS more responsive to politicians than to paying customers and the taxpayers who fund this “essential service”. It’s a socialist’s dream.
Force the many to pay for the bus rides of a few.
According to the city budget (page 240) the annual cost of ATS is about $1,500,000 (doesn’t include the Loop or Call-a-Ride). The annual budgeted revenue for ATS (bus fares) is $34,000.
In what world does this make sense?
Let’s be honest. The socializing of ATS is a total failure.
Beware. A bus transit “fee” (like Corvallis) is probably coming to your utility bill. It won’t be called a “tax” or “levy” because that would require voter approval. Your city government will never let voters be the final voice on “free” bus rides.
Hmmm, how much monies did the cities receive for transit as part of the Covid-19 stimulus package? Could there be a connection?
A statewide transit tax was based a year or two back. Not sure if you are retired or still drawing a paycheck but it is a separate line item on your pay check taxes. I believe it was voter approved so we tough to blame politicians on that one. I too wonder about the efficiency of buses, but these things have a long service life. If the fallout from this corona virus is bad enough maybe the bus is all any of us will be able to afford.
The transit payroll tax of one-tenth of 1 percent of gross wages was passed by the 2017 legislature. It took effect in July 2018.
Thanks for the correction, apologies for the inaccurate assumption. Though I suppose the voters still had their say as it is a representative democracy we live in.
If I was in control of any government agency in Oregon, I would have a freeze on all spending because Oregon is headed for bankruptcy unless the feds bail them out. Oregon was already bankrupt to start with because of Pers but shutting tax revenues down for months will push them over the brink and Trump is in control of state bailouts-not Pelosi.
Warning! Rant ahead.
“unless the feds bail them out” Well get in line, those feds are gonna be a little busy. California has decided that Corona virus money is a heaven sent answer to prayer and they’re banking on fed money curing all their past, present and future insolvency.And it’s not just California. This Corona virus thing could really work out well for all the floundering, failed and bankrupt socialist states with little necks stuck out and their beaks wide open waiting for big bird to drop fed money down their necks…and the best part is the printing press is no where near capacity. The government has plenty of money. Tell me again, what is it they do to make so much money? Oh that’s right, they take it from citizens..But the citizens no longer have jobs? It’s a beautiful world!
Council meeting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTq-XvAlZY
At 40:40 into it, Chris Bailey explains the City is paying $88,000 for one of buses. The other funding is coming from State & Federal funds…
Translation: so we will take $88,000.00 out of your right pocket and $1,849,665.00 out of your left pocket, and will point out how cheap it is to have only $88,000.00 taken out of your right pocket
It is very sound methodology and an excellent choice to make considering it will be at least a year (if not more) to even get them, and by waiting, we’d be guaranteeing the cost will go up – even presuming your “left pocket” will fund them.
Doesn’t matter if the buses are free. How much is the insurance for a city bus? How much is the fuel? How much is repair & maintenance? What are the total payroll cost for a driver (wages, taxes, benefits)
I am getting really tired of the City whining about how it is broke and then they do stupid crap like this!!!
The Albany bus system is the one part of city government that is a failure. Those big empty diesels spew out more exhaust than they do good. It’s largely Federal $ but that is paid by us too.
Having watched this last night, in kind of sick way, it makes financial sense. It doesn’t appear anyone really believes we need the buses, it’s more of.. we can get them for next to nothing and if we don’t take the State and Fed dollars someone else will. Also, it sounds like there’s folks involved that have the specific task of putting these deals together and it doesn’t sound like we would be viewed very positively if we pulled out of the deal. We may need these brokers in the future, don’t rock the boat. My question is, can we horse trade the buses to another municipality or sell our future locked in price? We’ll give you these buses in exchange for something we really need/want, like a street paving machine or even better a street paving machine and some cash. (assuming there’s any value to cash once this is over, maybe we’ll change that offer to a street paving machine and gold or silver, something with some scarcity). One of the other concerns last night was the money may not be there in the future, that’s a legitimate concern, get everything you can get before there’s nothing left. I would say our city is engaging in Toilet Paper fiscal policy, you have to believe there’s a good chance it’s going to happen, everyone is showing up hat and hand right now, both public and private sector, are going after the same public dollars at this point. It’s apparent this next stimulus is DOA, whatever you have as a community, a person, an organization to fight this, that’s what you have to work with.
On a national level, we have $25T public debt right now, that’s the bad news, the good news is we’re only paying 1% interest and we were growing much higher than that, not sure about the future. Wiki says… The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP) as of Q1 2014. The big question is will someone continue to buy our debt at these levels and not say, you know, I’ll buy your debt but I want 4%. It doesn’t take long to shrink that spread between the $269 and $145.
I hope HH writes an article on the Preschool issue from last night, that one I think is a much more interesting scenario and really illustrates local government policy.
Steve Reynolds “It doesn’t sound like we would be viewed very positively if we pulled out of the deal.” So maybe they should have cleared it with city council first before committing to a sketchy deal? Did the city council even have any forewarning that we were in the market for new buses? It’s like the kid that decides rather than pray for a new bike …it would be better to steal it and pray for forgiveness. So the ATS commits to a deal which puts the city council and the Albany taxpayer over a barrel and anybody who’s uncomfortable with this is what? An awful person? A backward hick impeding progress? A quaint dork who fails to understand that if we don’t spend it somebody else will? It’s so great that the ATS has a crystal ball that allows them to see into the future at a time like this…I guess that’s why they didn’t get approval for the deal first…their crystal ball told them they didn’t need to!
All I can tell you William is the markets are going to take care of this one way or another. Those that have resources will be OK, those that don’t, are going to struggle. There’s an old saying, debt only works when everything runs perfect. Society will adapt, if individuals no longer feel comfortable with the paper currency, they’ll use something else in exchange for goods and services. If the current system is set up that you receive free buses from the government you have to take them, it’s a hedge against losing the value of your liquid assets, do you keep the diluted currency or trade it for a commodity.
I think we’re getting pretty close to a reset, the government is going Keynes on steroids. Other states are saying they’re not willing to pay the bills of those states that were aggressive in their spending, those states that took on large amounts of debt or made unrealistic financial promises. Those states that are financially in trouble are going to be in for a very rough time, perhaps if people start connecting the dots they may look to different leadership or different political philosophies. All I know is there’s no incentive for one state to help another state to pay it’s bills that occurred before this pandemic, they can just sit back and let the markets run their course.
Ray is right, it’s a very normal process, “take advantage” at least until there’s a correction. But you have to admit Ray, buying 40 foot busses because at one point in time during the day you have 30 riders and the rest of the time you have three, is a bit inefficient.
“Did the city councel even have any forewarning that we were in the market for new busses?”
William just an FYI, it’s in the financials, it was questioned but at that time, before the pandemic, we had a relative small $11M deficit. If the state is accurate, we’re looking at an additional $30M in shortfall (state is predicting a 17% cut) then you add in the additional $11M, to me that sounds in the range of a $41M shortfall for the city budget. Looking at M5/50, we don’t have a lot of options, all we can do is hope the real estate market holds and the levies hold, right now we have no idea what’s going to happen to the markets because of the moratoriums, what happens when you take them out of this medically induced coma? What will the banks do, will they call the loans? If the values drop below or get too close to the Assessed Value of the properties, it will negate the levies and force compression, the absolute maximum total taxation levels allowed in Measure 5 against the actual real market value. It is hard to tell how the reduction in income tax will translate to a reduction in property tax, franchise fees, development fees, parks and rec fees, TLT, etc. but the 17% overall sounds pretty accurate. I would imagine they would track one another.
I think we all look forward to reopening and seeing what we have to work with.
“But you have to admit Ray, buying 40 foot busses because at one point in time during the day you have 30 riders and the rest of the time you have three, is a bit inefficient.”
While that may be true, can you point me to any city with municipal transit that IS “efficient?” I believe planning for peak-ridership is a key metric if there is to be a transit system.
So it’s just a fact that public transit on a wide scale in not “efficient”. Perhaps we need to turn it over to the private sector like an Oregon Shuttle or Hut or the company that bought them out, they seem to be able to run efficiently, their model seems to work. We are running out of financial capacity to fund organizations that are not efficient. we can afford to fund some using a charitable model but we can’t run them all that way. Our little community can’t keep borrowing or adding levies in order to fill in its budget. This idea of bonds and levies to fund the gaps in the budget because the property values are not high enough to sustain the budget on their own through the M50 limitations is walking us through a land mine. Our city/school/county governments sit in the balance right now of two girls over at the assessor’s office that are going to make the case for value using the same data that a lot of us are intensely tracking. Yes, it’s going to get intense.
Steve –
Here’s a good bit of history of mass transit:
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/urban-mass-transit-in-the-united-states/
“One of the other concerns last night was the money may not be there in the future, that’s a legitimate concern, get everything you can get before there’s nothing left.”
It’s a very-very normal process for cities nationwide to apply for available grants and take advantage of them. It’s SOP else virtually all city governments would still be using horse & buggy for municipal transportation IMO. By the time we get the new buses, a couple of the existing ones will be on their end-of-service regimen. I would hope they could be sold at that point.
When I hear they want to “improve service”, “to make it more useful to more people”, I hear more employees? So will these additional buses need additional 6 figure salaried employees to drive them? Meanwhile we’re threatened with public safety cuts unless new revenue is secured? Get ready for the shake down.
Yess sir we are being shaken down but they’ve normalized to the point where they don’t even realise it for what it is and if you call it out they look at you like there’s something growing out of your head.