Some Pinellas bus routes saved from chopping block

Pinellas County’s public transit agency will cut fewer routes than expected amid a budget crunch, its board of directors voted Wednesday night.

Now, the board and staff of the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority face another quandary: They have to find the money to offset the cost, about half a million dollars. And they have two weeks to do it, before the board makes a final vote on the next year’s budget Sept. 27.

Facing a shortfall, agency staff told board members months ago that they likely would have to reduce service to balance the budget or else cut positions or pay. They gave board members a list of a dozen possible cuts, including eliminating six of its lowest-ridership routes, making a handful of route changes and ending most service at 10 p.m. Those cuts would total about $3 million, double the amount the agency needed to save.

The post-10 p.m. plan was scrapped. Route 90, which mostly transports resort workers from St. Petersburg to St. Pete Beach, was saved, with a proposal to turn it from a loop into an out-and-back route. Route 58, the only one serving St. Petersburg College’s Seminole campus and Seminole’s city center, was also moved off the chopping block, though staff suggested cutting a little-used portion of it in the Carillon area.

That left $1.5 million in cuts in the proposed budget. Among them were routes 813 in Dunedin and 814 in Safety Harbor, the agency’s two lowest-ridership routes; Route 32 around St. Petersburg, with stops near several hospitals and the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus; and Route 5, which runs along Fifth Avenue and serves St. Petersburg College’s Gibbs campus.

But on Wednesday, at a planning committee meeting in the morning and at the evening’s budget hearing, board members expressed dismay at the idea of nixing any routes.

“Even though they may be low-ridership routes, they still get people to and from work,” said County Commissioner René Flowers.

The board settled on preserving routes 58 and 5, which serve St. Petersburg College students and employees, and Route 32 in downtown St. Petersburg. But on Wednesday night, it could not figure out a way to cover the $500,000 it will cost to maintain them.

Joshua Shulman, a citizen appointee on the board, moved to cut a program approved earlier this year that would let all veterans ride for free. The program stemmed from a pitch to provide free rides for disabled veterans, and paring it back to the original idea would save the agency an estimated $300,000, Shulman said. Jim Olliver, the vice mayor of Seminole, agreed, saying the move to expand free rides to all veterans had been based on emotion, not data. But that motion failed in a 6-9 vote.

Chris Latvala, a county commissioner, proposed doing away with some of the agency’s free-ride days, including general and municipal election days, St. Petersburg’s Halloween on Central and a free trolley during the Toronto Blue Jays’ spring training in Dunedin. That idea had some support, too, but board members were generally wary of cutting those days without knowing how much money they’d save doing so.

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And a plan to save money on trash collection has been a mixed bag, said the transit authority’s CEO, Brad Miller. It has cut $200,000, about a third of its trash budget, through a plan to eliminate some trash cans. But Miller’s efforts to see if cities would take up some of the burden of collecting trash at bus stops were roundly rebuffed by city managers, he said.

The board ultimately gave tentative approval to a budget that’s yet to be balanced, with direction to staff to come back with ways to save enough money to keep the routes.

“There’s going to be hardship involved if we take them away,” said the board’s chairperson, St. Petersburg City Council member Gina Driscoll. “I have a really hard time with that.”