RTD bobbles budget, buys rejected lifts
By: Burt Hubbard
News Staff

The Regional Transportation District board of directors rejected to move to equip its new buses with wheelchair lifts but unknowingly included $1.2 million in its budget to buy them.

The revelation came one day after the RTD board approved a $185.8 million budget that includes $21.4 million to buy 89 articulated buses for 1983.

But the buses will cost the district only $20.2 million. The remaining $1.2 million is slated for wheelchair lifts that won’t be put on the buses.

RTD Executive Director L.A Kimball has said that handicap ridership on the more than 300 buses that now have lifts do not justify the cost for the new buses.

“WE HAVE CARRIED as many as 50 (handicapped) individuals on any particular day using 331 vehicles,” he told the board Thursday.

RTD board member Charlotte Houston said Friday she didn’t realize that fact when she made a motion Thursday to add $1.3 million to the 1983 budget to outfit all 89 buses with lifts. The board defeated the motion 10-5.

Those voting against the lifts said current low-frequency ridership by handicapped people doesn’t justify equipping more buses and cited increased maintenance costs of the lifts.

Asked about the snafu, Houston said, “I guess I should have known.”

Nor did RTD board member Tom Bastien know the lift money had been kept in the budget when he moved to equip half of the new buses with lifts. The board rejected the move 8-6.

“THAT’S INTERESTING,” said Bastien Friday. “Why didn’t the (RTD) staff tell us?”

Even Kimball said he wasn’t aware that the lift money was still in the budget.

Kimball blamed the error on a staff member who, he said, apparently had failed to delete the money for the lifts from the budget.

The confusion dates back to July 1981 when the district signed a contract with M.A.N. Truck and Bus Corp. to buy the 89 buses for $21.4 million with the lifts included. The buses were to be delivered between June and September 1983.

But in December 1981, the RTD board voted to take the lifts off the buses and reduce the total price by $1.2 million. The 1983 budget, however, failed to reflect the reduced price.

Kimball said the omission won’t alter the budget.

“THERE’S NO NEED to change it,” he said. “We won’t spend it.”

About 80 percent of the cost of the lifts would have been paid by a federal grant.

And Houston and Bastien said the fact that they wouldn’t have had to increase the budget to get the lifts didn’t affect the vote.

“I don’t think it would have made much difference,” said Houston. “We needed 11 votes to pass it.”

The votes on the lifts came after about a dozen people, including several politicians, urged the board to make the buses accessible to the handicapped.

The handicapped community has vowed to try again for the lifts after a newly elected RTD board takes office in January to replace the appointed 21-member board.

Created on

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Posted on

Tuesday 10 May 2016

Tags

Board Meeting, cost, funding, LA Kimball, maintenance, RTD, wheelchair lifts

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