Trumbull voters to face transit levy

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Faced with the reality that Niles- Trumbull Transit, a countywide transportation service, will shut down at year’s end, Trumbull County commissioners took steps Wednesday to replace the service.

Commissioners authorized creation of a county transit board and took steps to ask voters in November to approve a 0.5-mill, $1.7 million per-year, five-year countywide levy to fund a new service.

The levy would cost the owner of a $100,000 home $17.50 per year, said Adrian Biviano, Trumbull County auditor.

Commissioners are expected to pass another resolution by Aug. 10 and submit it to the Trumbull County Board of Elections for the measure to go on the Nov. 8 ballot.

County commissioners have used $635,000 in senior-services levy money each of the past few years to help run Niles Trumbull Transit, which has a budget of about $1.5 million. Fees and grants have provided the rest of the service’s budget.

The 0.75-mill senior-services levy generates about $2.3 million annually and costs the owner of a $100,000 home $26.25 per year.

Niles-Trumbull Transit provides rides to senior citizens, people with disabilities and children age 2 to 12 for $1.50 per one-way trip for residents of Niles, Howland, Liberty, McDonald, Cortland, Warren, Girard, Lordstown, Hubbard Township, Bazetta Township, and Weathersfield Township. Those communities pay Niles-Trumbull Transit a membership fee, but the membership fee would be eliminated if the levy passes.

It costs $2 for senior-citizen rides in nonmember communities, and the cost can be as high as $8 per ride for other riders.

If the levy passes, the $635,000 in senior services levy funds would be directed toward other senior services, said county Commissioner Paul Heltzel.

The new levy would allow a new transit service to take the place of Niles-Trumbull Transit and allow for modest expansion, said Ralph Infante, Niles mayor, who will be chairman of the committee trying to pass the levy.

The city of Niles has run Niles-Trumbull Transit since 2001, but it has grown large enough to become a potential drag on the city’s finances, so the city told county commissioners early this year it was getting out of the transportation business at the end of the year.

Heltzel said commissioners will create the transit board regardless of whether the levy passes. If additional money is not approved by voters, commissioners will allow the transit board to use the existing $635,000 from the senior services levy to run the new service.

But Tom Harwood, a former member of the Senior Citizens Advisory Council, which recommends funding for the senior services levy, said the transit service can’t survive on $635,000.

“The whole transportation matrix collapses without it,” Harwood said of the additional levy funding. “We’re breathing on borrowed oxygen right now.”

Harwood said county commissioners provided senior-services levy money to Niles-Trumbull Transit after the seniors levy first passed in the fall of 2005 because it was a way to provide senior citizens with $2 rides.

But only 25 percent of Niles- Trumbull Transit’s riders are senior citizens, Harwood said. Sixty-five percent are disabled, and 10 percent ride for other reasons.