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Message from the Council Chair - May 2003

Regional services and planning go hand-in-glove

I wanted to take this opportunity to share my goals as Council Chair, and what I call our two "organizing principles" as the work of the new policy board gets under way.

First, the Council is engaged in the delivery of services. To me, it simply makes sense that some services, transit and wastewater treatment chief among them, be provided on a regional basis. To do otherwise would mean duplicating services at the local level, and that would be less than efficient.

Second, the Council is charged with regional planning and it's very much my belief that planning these services goes hand-in-glove with delivering them. Integrating planning and operations serves the region well.

The Council has done a good job of planning and providing cost-effective and efficient services. But these are different and difficult times, requiring reform, innovation, evaluation of core government functions, and doing a better job of living within our means.

To that end, the Council in April cut $17 million from its 2003 budget, reducing the agency's operating budget for the year from $412 million to $395 million, helping address a shortfall facing transit in the 2004-2005 biennium.

Our budget balancing initiative requires a combination of increasing bus fares and reducing service, eliminating more than 200 positions, reducing administrative costs and using some federal capital funds for transit operations.

These efforts are not without pain and hardship, and without question, are the most difficult part of our mission. We are, however, committed to helping balance the state budget in a way that preserves service to our customers as much as possible, achieves greater efficiencies, maintains our publicly owned fleet and facilities and positions the Council to grow the system again when the economy turns around.

Peter Bell

May 2003