The MARTA Board of Directors and the agency’s leadership team have an abiding respect and admiration for the hardworking employees who have faithfully served the travelling public over the past four decades. To continue that legacy of public service, the sobering reality is that MARTA must fundamentally change the way it conducts business.
The one-cent sales tax collected in the city of Atlanta and Fulton and DeKalb counties, which funds most of MARTA’s operations, is a volatile source of revenue that’s entirely beyond our control. Change is rarely easy, but it’s absolutely critical to our long-term success – even survival.
Over the last several years, MARTA has been taking prudent and aggressive steps to get its financial house in order. That effort includes identifying new sources of revenue, implementing operational efficiencies, using technology more effectively and cutting costs wherever we can. For example:
• We have balanced MARTA’s budget two years in a row – with $9 million and $14 million surpluses, respectively – which hadn’t happened in the previous seven years.
• We recently modified our electricity consumption, a move estimated to save the agency nearly $3 million a year.
• We established a floating-rate note program, allowing MARTA to trade on its own creditworthiness. As a result, we expect to reduce our borrowing costs and save more than $500,000 over the next three years.
• By converting to paperless paychecks for employees, we have saved about $100,000 a year.
We’re making solid progress transforming MARTA for the future and still have much to do. That’s why we are obliged to state the facts regarding assertions by the leadership of Local 732, Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents many MARTA employees. Specifically, we must address statements about our ongoing efforts to improve Mobility (paratransit) service that provides curb-to-curb transportation for customers with disabilities and eligible seniors.
MARTA is exploring how best to provide better service to all of our customers – including those who use Mobility – in part, by reducing unacceptable levels of absenteeism by a few employees. A relatively small handful of frequent no-shows cost MARTA an estimated $10 million a year; about 75 percent of that cost is attributable to ATU-represented employees.
Repeatedly, we have asked ATU’s leaders for serious suggestions how to cut costs and improve performance. Unfortunately, they have seemed more interested in fighting than finding workable solutions.
At least two years before the ATU’s current labor contract expired, management was considering a more cost-effective business model for Mobility. One option includes “sourcing” the service to a third-party contractor to make much-needed improvements for our most vulnerable customers while also lowering personnel costs. In any scenario, MARTA would retain full control and ownership of all its Mobility vehicles and other assets.
If MARTA decides to move forward with sourcing Mobility, we will offer the ATU a fair opportunity to compete. The board recently postponed an important vote to begin soliciting proposals from private companies to give the union enough time to prepare its own proposal.
More important, we anticipate that Mobility employees with good attendance and who do a good job will be retained, regardless of whether they are being paid by MARTA or by a private company. No decisions have been made about how to proceed.
Any cost savings that might be realized by sourcing Mobility or other departments will be re-invested in service enhancements for MARTA’s customers and in the economic well-being of our employees, who have always been our main priority. Historically, MARTA has endeavored to be a wise steward of public funds and a proud champion for the rights of “the least of these,” as well as the middle class. That is still our mission.
When labor talks began, management and ATU’s leadership agreed to a set of ground rules, including a stipulation that we would not negotiate in the media. Management has complied with those rules, and we intend to continue doing so. Our goals, however, are straightforward: Offering employees a meaningful wage and benefit package while curbing the inexcusable absenteeism by a small number of workers that is costing us millions of dollars.
Even as we proudly honor MARTA’s past, we must do what is necessary to keep making our transit system better now and in the years ahead. The customers who pay to ride, the state lawmakers charged with MARTA’s oversight, and the taxpayers who support us have all made it clear that they will accept nothing less. We won’t, either.
