Buoyed by stronger-than-expected sales-tax revenues, C-Tran anticipates it will be able to maintain current bus routes for at least the next two years.
Clark County’s transit agency had expected it would need to begin imposing deep service reductions as soon as 2012.
Now, in a two-year proposed budget that will take effect in January, the C-Tran board is weighing a proposal that will maintain all existing routes at least until early 2013.
“Sales tax revenues have been slightly above what we had forecast,” said Scott Patterson, the agency’s director of development and public affairs. “That’s the primary driver.”
A sales tax of 0.5 percent generates almost two-thirds of C-Tran’s revenue.
The proposed two-year budget is $82.5 million.
Agency officials, stung by a precipitous drop in revenue with the economic recession, assumed there would be no increase in revenue this year. Instead, in a slight flicker of economic recovery, Patterson said sales tax revenue this year has grown 3 to 5 percent since last year.
He said the agency continues to draw its cash reserve down to just enough to meet payroll for 90 days.
It also benefitted from three rounds of federal funding, including a $4.5 million boost last month from the Federal Transit Administration’s State of Good Repair program. Last year, C-Tran received $7.3 million in federal economic stimulus funding for a variety of capital projects, including energy efficiency upgrades and new vehicles.
C-Tran employs 388 people to operate a fleet of 170 buses and paratransit vans.
Lost funding
The transit agency is still feeling the effect of the repeal of the state’s motor vehicle excise tax in 2000, when C-Tran and other transit agencies lost out on a source of revenue that directly matched the money raised by the local sales tax. C-Tran has steadily eaten into its reserves since then, while also experiencing increases in labor costs and demand for its C-Van paratransit service.
Voters will be asked next November to approve a 0.3 percent boost in the sales tax.
A third of that increase would go toward high-capacity transit. It would be split between the cost of operating an extension of Portland’s light-rail transit system across a new Interstate 5 bridge and building a new bus rapid transit corridor on Fourth Plain Boulevard between the Vancouver Mall neighborhood and downtown Vancouver.
Voters would decide separately on the other two-thirds of the measure, to avert reductions in existing bus service.
Earlier this year, C-Tran officials said they would face budget reductions of as much as 39 percent by 2012 without increasing the sales tax rate. The unexpected boost in sales tax revenue this year may have delayed that shortfall, but Patterson didn’t rule out the risk of emergency reductions if the economy worsens.
“It could be earlier than 2013 if we see another significant dip in sales-tax revenue,” Patterson said. “That’s probably the most volatile trigger that we have.”
