“We should have been talking a long time ago.”
In all fairness to the man who uttered it — Homewood City Council President Bruce Limbaugh — that comment was not intended as an official statement. In fact, it was almost an aside, Limbaugh’s parting words to one of the 30 or so people who had gathered around a conference table in the council offices for a special called meeting of its Finance Committee.
Nonetheless, Limbaugh’s words, along with the 45-minute meeting that precipitated them, stand fairly well as a thumbnail assessment of the relationship between the Birmingham-Jefferson Transit Authority and the suburban communities — Bessemer, Fairfield, Homewood, Mountain Brook, Hoover and Vestavia Hills — to which the BJCTA provides bus service. In fact, I’d carry that thought further and suggest that the assessment applies to the general practice of what we in Birmingham refer to as “regional cooperation,” which actually is a quaint euphemism for what most of us would like to be, but realize that we are not — a real community, with a shared sense of identity, purpose and destiny.
Before getting to the meat of the Monday evening meeting — and its larger meaning — a bit of clarification is in order. In discussing mass transit in the Birmingham region, it is necessary to distinguish the day-to-day operation of the BJCTA from the attitude and actions of a majority of its board of directors.
Under the leadership of executive director Ann August, the bus system does the very best it can with the meager resources it is provided, and serves as a critical lifeline for many transit-dependent people in our community. The board, meanwhile, is controlled by a majority that displays no interest in building a transit system that meets the needs of the community at large — or, for that matter, any segment of it — and is instead content to have the BJCTA serve as a political football and, not coincidentally, a means of perpetuating the dysfunctional relationship between the city of Birmingham and its surrounding suburbs.
This was illustrated amply at the meeting in Homewood. The meeting’s purpose was to have the city council’s finance committee revisit the recent decision of the full council, in its adoption of Homewood’s budget for 2015, to cut the city’s annual allocation to the BJCTA in half. As a result of that action, the transit authority had indicated that it would be forced to eliminate weekday bus and paratransit services — the latter provides time-flexible, specialized services for disabled and special needs riders — between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. beginning Dec. 22.
Consequently, a number of regular bus riders and other transit advocates were in attendance Monday night, along with August and members of her staff. Also present were BJCTA board chair Johnnye Lassiter and board members Bacarra Sanderson-Mauldin and Frank Topping.
Homewood Mayor Scott McBrayer was there, too. Invited by finance committee chair Walter Jones to open the meeting, McBrayer noted that his office has received “a lot of calls” from people protesting the funding cut, and said the situation with the BJCTA was less about money than about finding “common ground” in addressing his city’s transit needs.
“It’s never been necessarily about the money,” McBrayer said. “I don’t think we’ve ever said that we can’t afford this. But the city of Homewood is the customer here. We have invested a lot in transit, and we’re looking for solutions here from the transit authority. We want to be responsible as we try to provide the best service for the amount of money that we provide.”
In a sentiment that would be echoed by more than one of the city councilors present, McBrayer expressed frustration with the BJCTA board, saying, “We should be talking about ways to provide better service across Jefferson County.” The strongest comments in that vein came from Councilor Fred Hawkins, who in the course of what was sometimes a contentious discussion among the committee members lamented the absence of “actual working meetings” between the board and its constituent communities. He characterized the council’s decision to cut transit funding as “arbitrary,” but added that he finds the lack of responsiveness from the board after the city notified the BJCTA of its intentions in a letter sent from McBrayer’s office in September “disgusting.”
“Transit is a critical thing for this region,” said Hawkins. “We have seen real improvements under Ms. August, but I am very disappointed in the board. It makes me sick.”
As a contingency, the finance committee had requested a separate proposal from ClasTran, which provides paratransit services under contract to the BJCTA, to ensure that at least those services would not be interrupted. The problem is, ClasTran cannot enter a contract with Homewood without the approval of the BJCTA board. Asked if the board would approve such a deal, Lassiter first demurred, saying that she had no way of knowing how the board would vote. When pressed, however, she responded in a way that made clear that any effort at constructive compromise would be dead on arrival.
“I don’t think we would be able to approve that,” Lassiter said. “We do plan to go forward with the cuts in service. You told me last week that you would be asking for half of the service you’ve been getting, and we plan to give you that.”
After ascertaining from ClasTran director Fenn Church that the service has the capacity to serve paratransit users in Homewood, committee chair Jones expressed his own frustration.
“If you say you can service it and the board says ‘no,’ then we’re held hostage,” Jones said. “And I don’t see the current board approving this.”
Jones said he had planned to propose that the finance committee recommend to the full council that it restore funding for the first six months of 2015, giving Homewood and the BJCTA time to craft a solution that would keep the city’s bus service in place for the foreseeable future. But Lassiter’s dismissive stance clearly took the wind out of his sails. Ultimately, the committee agreed — and the full council later gave its approval — to restore funding through the end of January, in hopes of working with the board to come to a longer-term resolution over the next six weeks.
And so it goes, with the BJCTA and in our fractured and fractious community in general. We lurch from one eminently preventable crisis to the next, when what we should be doing is talking to each other — communicating, coordinating, cohering around strategic approaches to community problems.
This state of affairs might not be quite so bad if the only people who suffered were the politicians and political appointees who feather their own nests at the expense of those they purport to serve, and who would rather indulge in petty power plays than do the work of the public.
But they do not suffer at all. We do.