State Budget and CUE Bus Service

Attended Sen. Chap Peteresen and Del. David Bulova's Town Hall this morning at Fairfax City. Large crowd, which was nice to see. Very sobering news though. We're facing the prospect of a $4 billion shortfall in state revenues. The Governor has recommended a good number of cuts that will adversely effect K-12, health and human services and other essential government functions.

Chap and David spoke of their concerns with the budget, but left the impression that except for K-12 education cuts, many of the cuts the Governor is proposing such as taking money from the children's breakfast program, will stay. This just isn't right. We're in the midst of a recession and while I know times are tight and austerity in order, government does have a responsibility to help those who are less fortunate with the basics: food, shelter and health care. Cutting health care to children and taking away the state aid for breakfast for poor kids isn't the right thing to do. Anyhow, that's what will probably happen.

So what does that mean for the City? Well, we shall see what comes down the pike from the General Assembly when they agree on a budget. Likely the budget will include reduced state aid by about $1.2 million, reduced aid for constitutional offices by $300,000 and other cuts through our contracts with the County that could run up to $1 million. In other words, we will have to face tough choices to cut more (and potentially lay people off) or increase taxes and other revenue to make up for the shortfall. It's likely going to be a combination of both cuts and revenue enhancements. But I'm hoping and praying no layoffs.

On that point, somehow it's gotten around the the City Council is looking at killing off the CUE bus service. Hogwash. What we are looking at is how to possibly restructure it and/or generate more revenue. Here are the facts:

1. The City pays about a $1 million a year subsidy for the bus service, which is less than half of the service's $2.8 million budget
2. 36 percent of the riders are City residents; 30 percent are Mason students and the rest are from other jurisdictions
3. Mason provides 14 % of the funding ($400K) and as we saw, 30 percent of the ridership
4. Staff recommended options that included layoffs - NOT the Council (we didn't ask for that)

At the next meeting, we're going to raise the fares to match either what Metro charges now or what it will starting in the summer. So the fare is going to go up to $1.45 or $1.75. That will help cover some of the shortfall and we hope Mason may be able to contirbute more. I hope we can also start a marketing campaign to encourage more people to use the service, which acutally reduces the overall cost to the City.

Hope that clears it up. Any other questions/comments, feel free to post them here or give me a ring.