Editor,

South Whidbey Senior Services recently held a meeting with Island Transit staff to discuss paratransit service cuts.

It was an informative meeting for folks who find themselves in a bind resulting from service cuts that have resulted from mismanagement of Island Transit. Solutions for the problems must come from the administrative end of Island Transit and its Board of Directors.

Sadly, that is where the problems were created. Transit users and other attendees voiced their concerns and offered suggestions to help. Several paratransit users wondered why they have not been allowed to pay for, or toward, their needed transportation.

Several special meetings of the board of directors and for transit users are being scheduled to explain, understand and fix budget problems. The issues of management evaluation and board oversight are in progress by management and the board. What they need is new administration and more responsible and decisive board direction, now.

Both the executive director and the board of directors share responsibility for the problems with our transit system. They are all scrambling to correct problems that should have been prevented by much closer attention to the details of providing the several necessary and very useful transportation services to the citizens of Island County.

When our previous state senator was unelected, a couple of years ago, Island Transit lost a powerful champion in Olympia. That champion had facilitated years of financial grant assistance to Island Transit that faded with her defeat.

Island Transit must now deal with the reality of finding ways to generate enough money to provide transportation services that had been proudly, but unrealistically, “fare free” for years. It had been concluded by management and the Board of Directors that asking transit bus and paratransit users to pay any part of the cost of their transportation was “confrontational.” It had also been concluded that allowing advertising on transit vehicles was offensive to our “rural character.”

Island Transit administration and its board of directors needs to cause changes to our transit system that will provide practicable and dependable public transportation services. Transit users must be allowed to pay something for transit services.

Rufus Rose

Clinton