By: Diane Benjamin

Remember yesterday’s story where I told you the next Bloomington City Manager and Council can take the extra “enhanced revenue” and use it for things this Council didn’t pass? In other words, new people ignore what previous people did.

The Connect Transit Board meeting last night proved that. The new General Manager wants to reverse to fee structure. He thinks $1 for rides is easier, the extra quarter is too hard for riders. He also wants fewer people riding the Mobility buses because those rides are extremely expensive. He wants to offer those who qualify for Mobility free rides on the big buses. He also wants new fare boxes which is why he wants fares at $1. Change doesn’t work with the ones he wants.

Armageddon was close to breaking out among the Board members after their long fight to raise the rate to $1.25 and make “One Fare For All” policy. Later they gave David Braun a 4% raise anyway. His starting salary in 2021 was $157,000. Even though Connect is required to post salaries, I don’t see them on the website. With a likely raise in 2022 and now this 4% he’s probably a little over $168,000 a year now.

The meeting got better before the rate discussion. Connect hired a consultant to create a messaging program. They want people to know Connect Transit is good for the community. Board member Julie Hile thinks they deserve riders. The biggest obstacle their messaging needs to overcome is abuse of taxpayers. They are close to having an operating loss of $1.3 million every month. Only people with no critical thinking skills think they deserve riders. Stay tuned for the propaganda campaign that will be coming. Redistribution of wealth and massive deficient spending isn’t sustainable. You aren’t suppose to notice those. Have you noticed many of the buses have the windows covered now so you don’t see the empty or close to empty seats?

The room has 3 screens, slides were shown for the Board. They aren’t easily viewable on the live-stream. Worse, most of the Board members are difficult to understand. I don’t know where the microphones are, but some need to speak louder to be heard. The most frequent voices were Julie Hile and Judy Buchanan. Julie was easy to hear, Judy wasn’t. David Braun and Ryan Whitehouse were clear, the other Board members rarely spoke but when they did they were difficult to understand. Member Barb Singer was on the phone, she could be heard.

David Braun evidently decided too much financial information was being released, they are now down to one page: PDF page 8 https://connect-transit.com/file/1982/11%2028%202023_BoT%20Meeting%20Packet.pdf

The only available number for subsidies (across all bus types) is $5.17 for every rider. Try messaging that one! It was stated that Mobility costs about $40 per ride, the new Flex is about $20.

The messaging and fare discussions are worth a listen. Just hit play to hear about the phone survey the consultant conducted and meetings with “stakeholders”. Who answers the phone these days?