- OK, this meeting is real. And we are Interview Committee A. Today is August 13, 2026, Thursday morning.
- OK, so we are doing today a couple interviews. And obviously, this is open to the public. And so we
- have both of those folks in here. Great.
- Got Nancy online, Kent here, Zach here. I'm Kate Rosenberger. Hope East Osborne District 3.
- Jennifer Crossley, Clerk's Office. Isak Asari, Council. I'm council as well. Okay. I'm going to start
- us off. Okay. So Zach, thank you for coming today. This should be quick and fun. Have you ever.
- been part of a commission, council, or board that focused on the betterment and wellness of a specific
- community, particularly a minority group? If so, what was your role and what impact did it have? Yeah,
- so not specifically that was dedicated solely to a specific minority group, but I have been. When I
- lived in Washington, DC, I was an advisory neighborhood commissioner, which is a low level local elected
- official that was in a majority black neighborhood, working class majority black neighborhood. And I
- had dealt with a lot of
- issues related with trying to protect a community that I think was being, there was a lot of environmental
- racism going on in that community with, there was a park in my district that had been, this is an insane
- story, it sounds nuts, it sounds untrue, but it is, that had chemical weapons buried in it during World
- War I era and that had not been taken care of. And so my entire term was dedicated to trying to get
- the National Park Service, because the National Park Service runs parks in D.C., it shouldn't, but anyway,
- trying to get them to take care of it.
- Yeah, so that was a lot of my time was spent on that. So, again, not something that was dedicated solely
- to that, but that was a big part of my, my term. Thank you. I want to acknowledge right now that this
- list of questions site was for the mission on the status of black males.
- So we may have to amend some things. I think that was relevant. I read it, and I think that is relevant.
- But as I look through it, I was like, yeah. Wait, I could change those words. So what inspired you to
- apply for a position on the board of directors? OK, so I am very passionate about sustainable transportation.
- I've been in your inbox many times on sustainable transportation issues, as I'm sure you're aware.
- I am worried about the state of Bloomington Transit. This year is shaping up to be the single worst
- year in change in ridership and the agency's history outside of COVID. We've got right now a 13% drop
- year to date. Obviously that could change before the end of the year. That's the single biggest drop
- in ridership in the agency's history, at least going back to the data that I've looked at outside of
- the 2020 thing, which is not entirely, that's not the agency's fault, that was just pandemic.
- And I don't see a sense of urgency from many public officials yet on that. I kind of worry we're in
- approaching like a death spiral in terms of losing ridership. And I worry also that we are maybe not
- focusing on the essentials as much as we should, which to me is frequency, reliability, and
- route optimization. Those are the three things that are the most important to me. And, yeah, sorry,
- I'll talk to her. I'm a very fast talker, I'm sorry.
- Frequency, reliability. And route optimization. Those are the three things I would focus on. And instead
- are focusing a little bit too much, I think, on distractions, which to me is microtransit is a little
- bit of a distraction. I'm skeptical of microtransit. We're only getting a handful of riders a month,
- most months. We have as low as two riders per month in February of this year. That is insanely low.
- And we're wasting, I think, a lot of money and time on that. I'm not opposed to microtransit as a concept,
- but I am concerned we're focusing too much on things like that that are a little bit of a distraction
- and should be
- refocusing on reliability, frequency, and route optimization. And if I may, I went back through a whole
- bunch of different documents that have been produced by Bloomington Transit, and the city, and IU even
- had one of them, going back decades. And they have talked about going back all the way back to 2009,
- calling for high frequency service, route optimization, cross town service, transit signal priority,
- going back to decades now. And we haven't really done
- and they're starting to move a little bit on signal priority, it sounds like, but a lot of we have still
- have across town service. We still don't have what I consider high-frequency service. We still, and
- we study after study in 2012, 2017, 2018, two in 2018, one in 2009, 2019, we've had saying, and nothing
- has really happened on that. The 2019 route optimization study, which was kind of shelved after COVID
- a little bit, although they did adopt some of it, called for in particular streamlining routes and,
- eliminating redundancy between routes. They did do some of the eliminating redundancy, but not really
- all that much. And the routes are still as circuitous and meandering as they ever were. And so we haven't
- moved enough, I don't think. And instead have done things like cut late night service and sort of seed
- that to Uber and Lyft and not only seed that, we're subsidizing Uber and Lyft rather than doing late
- night fixed route service. Anyway, so that's a long answer to that question, but that's why.
- As a as a follow up to that, is that could you talk to us a little bit about your your involvement hitherto
- on with the with the board itself and and sort of what your experiences of the board? Because, yeah,
- I mean, very, very noted all of the broader policy goals. And, you know, some of those sort of sit with
- councils, some of those sit elsewhere. And so, you know, sort of how do you understand this
- this board specifically, and talk to us a little bit about your involvement and understanding of the
- board. I mean, I've watched board meetings, if that's what you're asking. Essentially, my involvement
- so far is watching board meetings. But maybe more to your point is what is the role of the board? Yes.
- And I watched the meeting last week, so I understand where you're coming from a little bit, what you're
- looking for, Isaac.
- I don't think the role of the board is to directly manage the agency or have the experience to directly
- manage the agency yourself. That's the role of the management company that we've hired and the agency
- staff. The role of the board is to provide independent oversight and to know what questions to ask,
- when to ask them, when to push, and to know from firsthand experience from having ridden the bus regularly
- when they're telling, when it sounds true and when it doesn't. And also to,
- Broadly, I think the major role is to push the agency in a direction towards a philosophy that makes
- sense for you. And that's why I sent that letter to you guys trying to lay out what my general philosophy,
- whether I'm kind of repeating some of that here now, but that's the role of the board, at least as I
- see it, to push the agency in a direction to know when to push back respectfully, to dig down into data,
- and to oversee things. And I have a deep data background. It's my job as a data visualization expert
- and map maker. I know data well. I can push on that sort of stuff, respectfully, obviously. So yeah.
- Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. OK, that also then made me think, because you watch the
- board meetings, which is rare unless you're in them, I think.
- Do you think the board is missing any representation? If so, what do you think is missing and would
- you bring skills and experience to fill in those gaps? Yeah, so I'm not gonna criticize the current
- board members. That's not what I'm here to do, but I do think it could use more someone who's a regular
- bus rider. I'm not sure. I obviously do not, I've not been tracking the movements of the individual
- members of the board. I have no idea how they get around, but I get a feeling that
- there's not many regular bus riders on the board. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's my
- general feeling. And I think they need a regular bus rider on the board and I'm a regular bus rider.
- So I'm well acquainted with the flaws in the current system and some of the issues that are, because
- I face them when I ride the bus every day. Sometimes it takes an hour for me to get across town when
- it would have taken 10 minutes on a bike or a car. And that I think is pushing people back behind the
- wheels of cars. And that's because, I mean, it's a whole bunch of different things
- that are causing that. But the route optimization, I think, is one of them. There's no cross town routes.
- Just, I took the bus to get here today. That was not a gimmick. I do that regularly. And I took a screenshot.
- Every single bus going down the whole thing was 10 to 15 minutes late, running 10 to 15 minutes late.
- They were constantly running late. We only have, I think, 72% on time arrival. That's not great. I think
- we could aim higher. And it's been kind of stagnating at that level for years. Other agencies aim for
- 80 to 90%, I think we should.
- We aimed for that, I think, in the past couple of years. They had a report, but it's never really moved
- up, and it's not clear why. And a bus that is always late is not a bus you can plan your life around.
- So I am well acquainted with the actual day-to-day conditions of riding the bus, and I think I could
- bring that to the board.
- I'm just getting through it. You're fine. No worries. I keep rambling if you want me to. And now the
- pace is incredible. Sorry, I was very fast. That's okay. I'm just reading. How can I rephrase that to
- this situation? So I think I'm going to skip to number nine.
- Okay, in terms of the possibilities for VT in terms of positive public and private partnerships and
- what ideas do you have to create impactful partnerships or initiatives to address some of those challenges
- that you just were talking about public trends. Yeah, public private.
- solutions or partnerships. And I mean, one of the things that I know that we've talked about on council
- a couple of times is that there are several different bus services in the town of different types.
- in terms of IU, in terms of BT, in terms of private apartment complexes. There's lots of different pieces
- of that. And of course, you mentioned Uber and Lyft as a part of the late night solution. So it's ideas
- of how to create or further impactful partnerships. And I'm not at startup, I'm not opposed to all public
- private partnerships, but I would lean more on the public side. I think we need to be bolder with the
- agency and stop seeding ground
- just private providers. I'm taking mainly Uber and Lyft when I'm talking about this. I think during
- the pandemic, they stopped doing or cut back late night service substantially and sort of ceded that
- ground, I think, to Uber and Lyft. And not only that, sort of subsidizing Uber and Lyft rides when I
- think we should have been, I understand during the pandemic things went, everything was topsy turvy.
- We need to move back in the direction we were going in.
- And in fact, many of those plans that I talked about from 2009, 2018, 2017, 2012 called for expanding
- late night service. And that was back when they already had the late night service at the time. And
- instead we've gone the opposite direction. And not only that, our funding private competitors. I don't
- think we should be doing that. As far as other like private, like apartment complex buses, I don't think
- there's anything wrong with having private apartment complexes having their own shuttle service or whatever.
- I don't think the transit agency has any role there necessarily.
- With IU bus service, long-term, I think it would be great if we just had one transit agency in town.
- But I'm not opposed to IU having their own bus service. I think it would be like decades in the future
- we would do something not in the immediate term. So thanks for your question. I think it's been enough.
- Okay. So following up on all of this, I mean, what is the one
- uh, thing that you think is the largest issue with, um, with transit and, um, what role will you play
- being on, um, on this commission, um, uh, to address it? I mean, I think they're all tied up. Um, we
- have rapidly dropping ridership numbers. Why is that? I think it's cause we don't have, our routes are
- in our, uh, circuitous meandering, um, and slow.
- And we don't have cross town service and we don't have high frequency service and all of those things
- are one thing. That is why ridership is dropping all of those things right there. And I think we need
- to address all of those things. And those are not easy problems to address, but I am high enthusiasm
- and high energy and focus like a laser on things. And my job on the board I think would be to push
- the agency respectfully, constantly, but persistently in the direction of higher frequency, crosstown
- service, route optimization, all of those things that I mentioned on increasing reliability. Which is,
- I witnessed this firsthand in DC where I lived until relatively recently. I lived in Bloomington for
- several years before that, was in DC 10 years, moved back. Bloomington's the only place that I loved
- living. And DC, like all major cities transit agencies during the pandemic had huge losses in ridership.
- They brought in a new director, Randy Clark, right after the pandemic or right around the time of the
- pandemic, who turned the agency around on a dime. And it had the record fastest increase in ridership
- of any major transit agency in the country. And they are back to where they were beforehand.
- And it is, they did it through focusing like a laser on reliability, route optimization, and frequency
- increases. I would like to see us do something similar here because I worry if we don't do that, we're
- in a death spiral sort of situation. We're approaching one.
- DC was, I mean, we can't do everything that DC does in a much larger city, but they redesigned their
- entire bus network. For the first time in 50 years, every single bus route was redesigned, renamed,
- rerouted, everything. And they've seen a giant increase in ridership since then. I'm not saying we need
- to go to that extreme here, but I'd like to kind of copy a little bit of what they did in DC, the basics.
- Yeah. And then on that note also, just pulling
- Pulling from, again, from a thread that you mentioned early on, like, you know, Bloomington Transit,
- as you mentioned, serves very different transportation needs, right, including students, workers, older
- adults, people with disabilities, et cetera, people without cars, occasional riders. And so how should
- the board think about balancing those different needs, like when we're making service and funding decisions?
- Well, part of that's route design. You've got to design routes that are meeting all of those different,
- like you've got to hit work centers and populate where people live. And I'm sorry to keep hammering
- the same point, but I really do think it is that you've got to increase, if you want to get anyone to
- ride the bus more, you have to have it frequent. That's the main, the underlying thing, underlying all
- of the issues in the transit area. We don't have frequent enough service or buses that get you across.
- You have to transfer downtown for almost every single route. That is going to affect,
- seniors that's gonna affect students, that's gonna affect workers, that's gonna affect college professors,
- that affects everybody. You have to have frequent, high-frequency service across the town. And I'm sorry
- to keep harrying the same point, but I really do think that is the underlying issue to everything, the
- problems that we're facing. Excellent, thank you. Yeah. And so how, to follow up on that, how do you
- feel like as a board member, you can really institute how to change
- Well, I mean, you're 1 out of 5 people, so you can't control everything, but the role is to constantly
- be a constant voice for what I think needs to get us there, which is we need to redesign our routes.
- We need to put funding into getting more bus drivers and getting more buses on the onlines that have
- the highest ridership. And you also have to do things like
- for bus stop consolidation, which is another way to increase frequency without having to increase the
- budget. So that means getting rid of bus stops that are right next to each other, that are really close.
- And as you get downtown, many of the bus stops are right there, very close. That's another way you can
- do it without. I understand budget is a tight concern with any agency in public life in Indiana right
- now. But there's ways I think you can do it without increasing the budget. So my role would be to push,
- just constantly be a voice for the sort of things that I think we need to do. Yeah.
- I have just one last question, if it's okay, Kate and Hopi. So this is the last year of the arrangement
- through the ED Lit. I think that, I'm forgetting the number off the top of my head, but I think it's
- $3.7 million that goes from ED Lit transferred to Bloomington Transit. And so I'm interested in,
- sort of your views on sort of what happens next. So I think there's two interesting things happening,
- right? We have sort of this actually three really interesting things. You know, we have this this hopeful
- large investment in some new facilities. We have now a change in management company. And we have this
- change, potential change in what happens with the ED let moving forward. And of course, I mean, council
- could could address that. But
- in assuming that all of those things go in the direction that they seem to be heading, does that change
- the role of the board of directors here? Does it change views on priorities? Does it change to you our
- policy design? Does it change at all? How do you approach as a director this new landscape in the year
- ahead? Where do we find funding in a tight landscape is essentially what you're asking.
- I mean, I think you do it through things like I just was talking about. You find creative ways to reduce
- costs while simultaneously being able to increase frequency, which I think I think one of the examples
- I gave was bus stop consolidation. You consolidate bus stops that can speed things up without raising
- costs. I think the costs associated with the new facility are ballooning a little bit more so than I
- am comfortable with, and I'm not entirely sure why.
- be a voice for trying to tighten that up a little bit, because I think I'd rather that money go directly
- into increasing frequency rather than going into a large facility. Maybe it's needed, I have no idea,
- but I'm worried about how much money we're spending on things like that. I also think there's potentially
- untapped sources of funding locally. I don't see my role right now to be able to give you an answer
- of every single untapped source of funding that's available. I could look into that if I were appointed,
- and I have the background to be able to do that. But one area that I think is good
- I think we should raise parking rates. That's something that would be on city council to do. And some
- of that money, if not all of it, should go into public transit, I think. And that's another source of
- funding that we can find outside of the traditional sources. And I think there's potentially other places
- we can look for funding like that that haven't been tapped yet to try to help raise funds in that tight
- budget. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Is there anything else you would like us to know?
- I don't think so. I think my general philosophy, I think it's pretty clear. I laid it out in that letter
- I sent you to just my background is in data and driving into numbers and details and mapping. I think
- I bring a unique perspective to the board that not many other people can bring that I can actually dig
- down into the data itself and check the numbers and map stuff myself. Not that that's entirely the role
- of the board, but that's a unique perspective that not many other board members I think can bring.
- So that's one thing I think that makes me a good candidate. So. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
- Do you have anything else? All good. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much.
- you know I'm part of the job well it's part of the job and I I sometimes rather enjoy it because members
- of the public just have to sit there while we talk at that yeah I think it's only fair yeah yeah all
- right well leave you guys to it thank you very much thank you so much what do you like to stay put right
- here and that's excellent button over there oh you can see better right yep great well I need a minute
- same here I uh I'm gonna get my
- Where is my question? Good for me to get out and move. Is there an S on the end of your name, McDaniel?
- McDaniel. I believe on the screen there's a Nancy.
- Suspect that's Nancy. Yes, our board. Over over my other interested. It's not usually. Are you okay?
- Are you all okay? I start. Yeah, I'm quite done. Yeah.
- My apologies for selling you 10. When we talked on the phone, we said 10.30, and so I didn't, I flubbed
- up and sent you 10. So my apologies. Just need to get the questions out of here. That guy sure talked
- fast. Some people can talk so fast. I do sometimes too, but not- Yeah, I was about to say.
- I know that I talk fast at times. Jennifer, who exactly do you work for? Do you work for the council?
- The city clerk. That's me. She has an alter ego that you can find in other places. I was watching her
- alter ego this morning. That was actually one of the things that I did this morning. Yeah, we can talk
- about that later.
- Yeah, we sure can. Yeah, yeah, we can and should. And I'm just copying and pasting questions. I know,
- I'm trying to, I'm doing that kind of similar, but you two are in very, also different positions. Yes,
- you guys are very, so first I'm copying and pasting and then I need to go back and it would be ideal,
- of course, if this sort of thing was done prior to our actual meeting, but, um,
- Isaac, are you basically ready whenever we're ready? Yes, ma'am. It's one of those days where I have
- so much to do, I just want to cry, you know? Sorry, it's OK, but it'll be good when it's seven.
- We'll be fine. Most things are fine.
- I mean, it's still 1026 technically.
- Good enough. Yeah, I think so. Who wants to start with number one, which involves a slight reframing
- of questions? I'll do it again. And I think it's still a good question. Oh, yeah. Thank you for being
- here, Kent. First question, while you are part of this board, have you been a part of a board or commission
- or council that focused on the betterment and wellness of a specific
- community, particularly a minority group. If so, what was your role and what impacted you? Many years
- ago, before I was on the board of BT, I was on the traffic commission, but only for about two years.
- And then in 1990, I was appointed to the board at Bloomington Transit. So I had nine terms there,
- 36 years. And my whole career, professional career has been
- public transportation. I studied it in college as a grad student. I drove a campus bus to work my way
- through grad school. Then I went to work for IU and became the executive director of transportation
- services, which oversaw a campus bus and motor pool and parking operations. And we also ran an extensive
- training program that got more
- people here to Bloomington from transit management companies all over the country than any other university.
- And then my role on BT has varied, usually just a board member, but I've been the vice chair for the
- last few years. And we don't specifically serve minority groups, but a lot of our riders are minorities.
- particularly in the lower income groups. So that's pretty much the extent of my career in that specific
- area. Thank you. Thank you. As a follow up to that, how have you seen public transportation change during
- your career and tenure? So during your career, but also specifically over the last 36 years of your
- position on the support.
- Yeah, before I was on the board, we were the Institute for Transportation, which was part of the business
- school. I became the administrative director there. We were very much involved with Bloomington Transit.
- We did a study between Bloomington Transit and IU on behalf of the state to talk about merging
- the organizations. But we've been talking about that for decades. It's never happened, obviously.
- Although we've made a lot of progress, we operate out of a joint facility. IU actually owns the land,
- and then we jointly own the building. Actually, no, BT owns the building. And that agreement runs for
- another 11 years before it expires. There's, of course, an opportunity to extend it, but that's
- I think created a sense of urgency for some people to explore this profile parkway purchase that was
- recently done to build a new facility. So it's changed a lot. When I was first paying attention, DT
- ran a few of these Mercedes Benz buses that had wooden seats, and it evolved over time to become a public
- transportation corporation.
- in 1982, and there are eight PTCs in the state. We're the last one that was created, so they don't do
- it anymore. The advantage to that was it gives you some access to property tax authority, which gave
- BT a stable funding base that allowed them to start purchasing better equipment and then use that equipment
- to expand services and try and do a better job than they could with those old Mercedes Benz buses.
- Another thing that happened over that period was we used the funding to build the joint facility that
- we had. We also started a lobbying effort to go out and get more capital money. There were discretionary
- grants available in those days. There are not as many anymore, but we were able to use that to replace
- The fleet at Bloomington Transit and IU also got involved. They bought 27 new GM buses with money that
- we got through lobbying efforts. And another thing I did was I was the executive director of the Indiana
- Transportation Association, which was a lobbying group that went out to get money. So I was running
- to Indianapolis all the time. I was registered lobbyist, went to Washington DC and spoke to our congressmen
- and our senators
- And the ITA was instrumental in doing a lot to bring money into Bloomington in particular and the rest
- of the state as well. So I've seen it grow and evolve. And of course, now there's additional growth
- in other areas like our association with Uber and Lyft and microtransit. I'm not really a big fan of
- microtransit either.
- Very efficient. If you want to be efficient, you've only got a limited amount of money. You want to
- put the buses on the street where they can attract the greatest concentration of ridership. And you
- want to put it out there when people are there. There are a lot of misconceptions about we shouldn't
- drive such big buses because in the middle of the day you have smaller ridership. But you can't just
- switch buses all day long.
- And the biggest, the most important part, the most extensive part of your budget is labor. Labor and
- fringe benefits, about 70% of all your expenses go into that. So I've seen a lot of change over time
- in the amount of effort that goes into it and the money that goes into it and bigger and better equipment.
- And we've done a lot to look into
- of things like studying route efficiency and what Zach calls route optimization. We had an optimization
- study and we're still working up. We make adjustments every year. Most of those adjustments are in August.
- So there'll be some more coming in August. And the reason for that is about 70% of our ridership is
- based on Indiana University and students. So when they're gone in the summer, ridership plummets.
- And then when they come back, it starts to rise again. Another big change I've seen lately is the loss
- of ridership. And a lot of that was due to the pandemic and changing work style. A lot of people each
- work four days a week instead of five, or they don't go to the office and they don't need ridership
- or they don't need as much service. Excuse me.
- So that's kind of a roundabout way of answering that. Well, there's a lot of information in there.
- Thank you. I hope it helps. It's so helpful. Thank you. I'm curious about, so you've been on the board
- for so long, and thank you for your service. Why reapply? Why do you want to remain on the board? What
- remains to be done?
- I'm committed to public transportation. That's been my entire working career. And I've spent so much
- time working with BT that I have a real fondness for it. And I feel responsible for it. So I don't want
- to just walk away. I always worry about if I leave, then who's going to come in and take over? So there
- are a few board members right now that I wish would leave.
- I've decided maybe this is a good time to bring this up. I'm really upset with some things that have
- happened at Bloomington Transit lately. We had a huge fight over the purchase of this property at a
- profile parkway for the new facility. And one of the things I'm worried about there is I don't, in this
- current federal environment, I don't see how we're ever going to get the money to finish that.
- It is a good investment, nevertheless. If we can't get the money to build a facility, we still have
- the land and we can sell it and do other things with it. So that's going to take a few years to resolve.
- But I think I can see a lot of changes in the next four years. We're also transitioning to an electric
- fleet. I'd like to see that continue, although those electric buses are a lot more expensive than the
- diesel buses.
- So I feel committed to it. I want to stay with it. I mentioned that we had a huge fight over the property
- purchase, although eventually it passed by to nothing. And I made the motion to approve the resolution
- to agree to the purchase. And then we fought over it for an hour before the rest of the board members
- went along.
- And then we had a couple of executive sessions to talk about the new management contract. And our chairman,
- Jim McCleary, wouldn't let me have a copy of the proposals. So we went to the first meeting,
- first discussion. And the first thing I said was, I can't talk about this because I hadn't seen the
- proposals. So I pitched a bit and eventually got the copies.
- Then we had another executive session. Then they came back and said that they were recommending we dump
- our current management company, RITP DEV, and hire this new company. And I told them I'm absolutely
- opposed to that because I think John Connell has done a great job. And so has RITP DEV. So we fought
- over that for a while. Then Jim said, he announced that he expected, he said the committee was unanimous.
- I expect the board to also be unanimous.
- I said, that's not going to happen. So we fought over that for a while. They passed the resolution three
- to two, excuse me, the resolution to sign a contract with this new company. And then we went to the
- board meeting and voted on it. And they voted on the resolution to pass. We haven't signed a contract
- yet. We have to do that at our next board meeting.
- And I got up and left. I said, I've been here 36 years. This is the biggest mistake I've seen yet. And
- so I told him, I am seriously considering withdrawing my application to reapply. The thing that changed
- my mind after that, I went back and I was about one day away from coming back and to talk to you to
- say, yeah, pull the plug. I don't want to be reapplied.
- RITP-DEV signed a protest letter regarding the process of selecting a new management company. And in
- my 36 years here, that's the first time we've ever had a protest. And I looked at it. I read the letter.
- It's four pages long. And I agreed with so much of what they said.
- I think you guys ought to see a copy of that if you're serious about this. Anyway, that encouraged me
- to wait and see. The way it works is my term has expired. I was up to July 31st. But I get 90 days where
- I still am on the board. And I thought, well, I'll write it out and see what happens. We have a board
- meeting next Tuesday to approve the new contract.
- I'm still feeling that, and I want to be totally honest with you on this, I can't work with Jim and
- Doug Korn and Don Griffin if they insist on taking this new path and hiring a different company and
- getting rid of our general manager. If they do, I'll quit. So you need to know that right ahead of time. Yeah.
- Thank you so much. This is so helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. This is really helpful. I'm just looking
- at questions we asked earlier. I think in that same vein, a lot of changes are coming or not. Isak asked
- last time, with the ED lit funding leaving the $3.7 million, what happens next? Does it change the role
- of the directors and the priorities? Well, the money that
- We've been getting that 3.7 million, excuse me, the lit mine. Sorry. We've been basically stockpiling
- that for the construction of the new facility. Because regardless of how expensive it is, it's going
- to take a lot of local money. The money is also available to use for the green line, which runs across there.
- east and west, we look at what they call bus rapid transit service there. And that's very expensive.
- But there's a lot of things we can do with improving stops and signal prioritization, which is in our
- next budget, to improve the flow of traffic through there for buses and to provide much better east-west
- service that way. So we can use that money for that.
- If we don't get the money from the facility, then we'll be able to do a lot of other good things with
- it. This is one that I asked Zach before. I'm going to reframe it a little bit. It's the question about
- impactable private and public partnerships that you referenced already.
- Having looked into that for numerous years in terms of between IU and BT, I guess I'm interested in
- your views on the future of that potential consolidation, whether or not it can happen, whether or not
- it would be good for Bloomington as a community, for the organizations, and whether there are other
- potential partnerships out there. Feel free to
- to kind of play around just with that concept of partnerships. I think it would be good for the community.
- I mentioned earlier, I was the executive director of the Indiana Transportation Association, well,
- excuse me, of Indiana University. And in that role, I was often involved in discussions between Bloomington
- Transit and IU as far as merging the systems. I used to recuse myself when they'd start to talk about
- it at the board meeting, I'd get up
- and leave. And then the chairman, Ray McConaughey, in those days said, no, don't stay. We want your
- input. And what I observed back then was IU was very reluctant to give up control. That was very important
- to them. They also didn't trust the city council to look after the needs of their students. They thought
- they were better suited to do that. In those days, there was a big, big difference
- But we get our state funding BT from the Public Mass Transportation Fund, EMTF. And that used to be
- a performance-based system. And so I ran the numbers and figured out that if IU and BT merged and they
- put all their service together and all their statistics as one, they could bring in $2 million a year
- more than they were at the same time.
- a zero sum game that we would have angered everybody in the state because we were taking money away
- from them. At that point, the funds had grown to like $42 million a year. And BT has already taken 2.8
- or something like that. If they had gotten the additional $2 million, we would have been killing everybody
- except probably Indianapolis.
- And people were upset about that, just the thought of it made them angry. So I think that IU was very
- reluctant to go into that because they get a lot more money from the state for other things. And if
- they made all the legislators mad, they thought they'd suffer. So that was a big difference. As far
- as the public private, now there's a difference. Now I think IU is losing interest in campus bus.
- From what I've seen, I've been retired for 10 years, so I don't have my finger on the pulse anymore.
- But I think they're much more likely to consider that now than they were in those days. They've cut
- back service too, so they've dealt with a smaller amount of service. So there's a chance that I know
- John Collins has met with them many times, and I've been involved in some of those meetings. And he
- continues to keep them
- appraised of what we're doing. Not sure that this new facility, if it ever is open, is going to be attracted
- to IU. So we'll just have to see what happens there. As far as public-private, I have not been a big
- fan of Uber and Lyft services or microtransit, although it's a
- something that Jim McClary, the chairman, really likes. He's pushing hard for that. It's inherently
- less efficient because you usually get like one passenger and one driver. And so it's kind of like a
- taxi service. So I'm going to be thrilled with that. As far as other public-private arrangements, I'm
- not sure if you're familiar with this, but we have an extensive program of providing service to
- apartment complexes. And when they have a lot of IU students there, they're willing to pay BT a lot
- of money to provide more intense service for the apartment complex. In fact, I'm pretty sure at our
- budget hearing that we just had a couple months ago, I think they said that we're bringing in over a
- million dollars a year from apartments just to fund that additional service. So
- I'm a big fan of the public private sector. I just think we need to do it in the most efficient way
- we can. And I'm not so sure this Uber and Lyft stuff is that efficient. Thank you.
- Could you talk a little bit about and again same same question and that we asked it you got the benefit
- of hearing these questions, then we'll ask them again but the we were talking about how Bloomington
- transit serves.
- you know, a lot of different people with very different transportation needs. And so could you speak
- a little bit about how you think the board should balance those different needs when making service
- and funding decisions? And then similarly, I'd love your assessment on whether you think that we currently
- are meeting those needs well. And I think that that's at least orthogonal, but it does intersect with
- with this question about how we're doing microtransit as one example. So we would love to hear your
- thoughts on how are we serving all of the different needs or how do we need to be serving the different
- needs of a variety of different users? Well, I'm glad you brought that back up because I don't want
- to leave you with the impression that I'm totally opposed to microtransit. It does help sort of a group
- fixed route buses. So that helps. Part of what we do at BT is actually required by the federal government.
- We're required to provide disabled service through our access, BT access. So we do that. And I think
- we probably have done more than is required by the federal government.
- So we really don't have a choice other than to do that. Our choice is how much of this door-to-door
- microtransit service do we want to provide? And that is something that I feel like we should continue
- to do. But I'm just concerned that we don't go overboard. I hope that answers your question.
- And and and I'm also just thinking about, you know, what else would you have? What else would you have
- us do like like, you know, so because because I it's it's well received and I get I get this tension
- and this is actually what I'm trying to triangulate around that the way that we're doing micro transit,
- for example, isn't isn't perfect. However, it's it's.
- it's addressing a necessary need. So what do we do? How do we do this better? Because I also hear very
- clearly the critique of we're not particularly happy with Uber. The ridership in microtransit has been
- low. So I'm just trying to walk through that tension of what's the appropriate action for us to be taking
- in this space. I'm not positive what the solution is to that. I can tell you that
- What some systems have done, and in fact, John Connell, our manager, was at Lafayette for something
- like 12 years or more. And when he was up there, they brought all the microtransit type service in-house.
- So they had their own drivers instead of hiring Uber or Lyft. And that worked pretty well for them.
- One of the reasons that I think BT has hesitated to do that is we're having fits just trying to hire
- enough drivers to run our fixed route buses. Last I saw, we were still seven down from what we prefer
- to have on a full-time basis. And that puts a lot of stress on the other drivers because they have to
- work overtime. And having read, I hope we don't
- miss runs, but that's a possibility if you can't bill them. And that's really bad for customer relations.
- So that's a possibility, but until we can get higher people to go through, we had signing bonuses, we've
- had job fairs. We've actually been in a lot worse shape in the past. I think we got it down to five
- drivers a little while ago, and then we lost a couple more.
- It's hard to retain drivers when they have to run these late night shifts. They just don't want to do
- that. Not very many of them, some like it, but most of them don't. They prefer to have like an eight
- to five kind of a job. And in the transit business, you don't get that very often. So the answer, Isaac,
- is I don't really know the solution. Right, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a really helpful thing.
- I want to ask a question I asked that too. Do you think the board is missing any representation
- or perspective? If so, what is that? He made the point, you know, you need a writer on the board. That's
- I've heard that many, many times. Most of our board members drive their cars to the board meetings.
- I know Nancy, I believe she's online.
- She rides the bus fairly often. I don't ride it very often myself. It's from where I live to BK and
- back. It would be a long trip. So I get in my car and I drive. So that is, you know, to have a frequent
- rider on the board would be an asset. Another thing that I've often heard as they complain about boards is,
- The fact that we don't have a disabled person on the board, although I might be able to fix that. I've
- got two bad knees and I have a cane and a walker in the car. I parked out in the lot here. So I don't
- yet use access, but that's another possible aspect. It's good.
- And then, you know, there's another possibility here that we don't really discuss very often, is BT
- has five board members. According to state law, we could have seven, but we'd have to go back and change
- the city ordinance. And I don't think that would be too difficult, you know, if the council wanted to
- do that. And then you could add people to the board.
- And then I wouldn't have to listen to those same three people all the time that I'm upset with. So would
- you generally be supportive of having this? Like as somebody who served on this board for 36 years,
- and one of the challenges, of course, with boards and commissions is getting participation and quorum
- and attendance and all of those pieces of things, which is always a consideration from the council level
- when we think about expanding board membership. So from your experience over the last 36 years,
- Do you think that the board should potentially be expanded to 7 members? And if so, do you think that
- there would be those challenges related to quorum attendance? All of those pieces. That's a very real
- possibility. We've been pretty good. It's rare that we can't get a quorum. But we only need 3.
- If we expanded the board, and this is another thing that came up when we were talking to IU, that we
- could expand the board, put somebody from IU on the board to give them more say in how we provided service
- to campus. But this never panned out. And I think, Hopi, I think that you've made an excellent point.
- It could be a problem. You'd have to get the right people on the board, people that were dedicated.
- Thank you. We do have an option for, you know, attending by zoom, but that's limited. You can't vote
- on a budget if you're on zoom and you can't miss more than two meetings in a row. You suck. Anything
- else you want to ask? No, no, very thorough answers. Thank you.
- Um, I think I have, I think I have one more that we talked about before, um, with Zach, um, and you
- may be like danced around it, but maybe you didn't directly state it. And so the question is, what is
- like the largest problem that you see with transit in Bloomington and how do you work to change that
- as a board member now? How do you want to continue? I mean, you talked about wanting to continue. So.
- What do you want to do in the future to continue or start working toward that? Well, as far as long-term
- problems, a long-term, consistent base of funding, we've got some now. But if we want to continue to
- grow and expand, we're going to ultimately need more. Another thing is hiring and retaining drivers.
- It's just really hard to get enough to keep things running.
- And there was another thing on the tip of my tongue. Well, those are the two biggest ones. Okay.
- And so, like you mentioned earlier in the interview about different how, like,
- under the question how things have changed, and you mentioned how some funding things have changed.
- And so in terms of that experience, you know, needing a consistent base of funding, are there places
- that you think that can be looked toward in the future to create that consistent funding? That's a challenge,
- and it's one we've been fighting for decades. Zach mentioned, you know, parking revenue.
- That'd be great for public transit, but we'd make a lot of people very angry who are benefiting from
- that money right now. I'm not sure that's the fight we'd want to pick. We've pretty much exhausted the
- state sources of funding and the federal sources. So until Congress gets its act together and decides
- that they want to support public transportation, or until we get a new general assembly that puts
- public transportation as a priority. Although I don't believe I mentioned this. I was talking about
- the PMTF and how we could have gotten more from it when it was a performance-based formula. It's no
- longer based on performance. They cut that out years ago and they froze the fund. So now BT does pretty
- well because we were doing very well when the PMTF grew to $42 million. I think it's now 44. So that's not it.
- a possibility anymore. There are just limited resources out there. Unless we have a new source of funding
- approved by the city or the county or the state, I don't think we can count on the feds. We need to
- just make sure we're as efficient as we can be.
- Okay, and then what about hiring drivers, which I know has been an issue for MCCSE as well? We're constantly
- trying. We bring them in, we train them, we drug test them, and then sometimes after you go through
- that whole process, then they drop out. And, you know, you finally start to make some progress like
- we were for a while, and then all of a sudden
- Somebody leaves. They get a better opportunity somewhere to get their public passenger chauffeur's license.
- And then maybe it'll go to a truck company. We have that problem with mechanics, too. You get somebody
- who's a, of course, it used to be diesel mechanics. Then they'd run off to the truck companies once
- they got suitably trained. But now, with these new electric buses, we've got to train them all.
- We get the manufacturers of the buses to help us with that. But there's a problem in that, too, that
- the Trump administration has basically killed the electric discretionary bus program. They don't want
- electric buses anymore. So the manufacturers are already starting to cut back on parts and equipment.
- And it's going to get more expensive. It's going to get harder to buy new buses.
- We may have to adjust our goals again. Instead of electric buses, maybe we'll have to go back to clean
- diesel. Great. And on that depressing note, sorry. Sorry. Is there anything else you want to share with
- us? No, I was wondering when I get that thing in about whether I want to continue to say,
- But I did get that in. We have a board meeting next Tuesday, and that's when they'll vote on the contract.
- There is a process going, but I don't understand the process because I've never been through it. I think
- that part of the process includes getting the general manager, not the general manager,
- the board chair to appoint a committee to review the protest. I'm pretty sure what Jim's gonna do is
- appoint himself and the two disgruntled employees that were the problem on the first committee. And
- if that's the case and the protest doesn't go anywhere, then I'll go. Yeah, that's understandable.
- I'd just like to say there were two public comments written here by Nick Ira. And the first one was
- about Zach said that they loved the idea of a bus rider giving perspective. And then the second one
- was during this interview, they said this kind of generational knowledge is beyond valuable, it's priceless.
- So I just wanted to make sure that we shared both of those comments as well. Thank you so much, Nick.
- Thank you. Okay, and I think we can be adjourned, right? No. What? Well, I want to make sure that we
- review our steps before we adjourn at the official meeting. But we can adjourn tomorrow. Yes, so thank
- you so much. I think so. Thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you very welcome. Thank you for
- the years of service that you have spent to BT, regardless of what happens after this.
- think that what you've given to the community through your service has been invaluable. Yeah, yes, I
- think that I've learned thanks for this interview too that were very interesting. Thank you. Of course,
- nice to meet you. Thank you so much. Okay. I have to get going, so. Yeah. We have a meeting tomorrow
- and there's another meeting this year. I love it. Okay.
- I was part of that 1130 and I got canceled. That was in here. Okay. So I'll see you. I'll see you tomorrow.
- I'll be in person and cause Kate, you're going to be remote. Okay. And that's at 10 30, but I'll send
- a follow up reminder for everybody. Um, as well. And it's just one tomorrow. Is that right? Yep. Awesome.
- All right. See you guys tomorrow. Um, and thank you. Now you have to address before you leave. Can I
- have those?