'Difficult and unpopular' moves to come from MBTA
WBJ FILE PHOTO
Commuters brave the winter cold at Worcester's Union Station.
In a document made public Tuesday, the MBTA's overseers said they hope to hold flat the special budgetary appropriation lawmakers provided the transit agency heading into fiscal 2017, while predicting "difficult and unpopular" near-term decisions.
The MBTA's Fiscal and Management Control Board approved its annual report Monday without any discussion, and the document was released on Tuesday.
Facing what was projected as a $242 million deficit going into fiscal 2017, it appears the control board is prepared to make up a substantial portion of that with own-source revenues and savings.
The report says the board believes it has "identified sufficient operating budget savings" so the Legislature can limit its special appropriation to the MBTA at the $187 million provided in fiscal 2016.
Other items of state assistance to the MBTA, which makes up a substantial portion of the T's budget, recur annually without the need for new appropriations.
The T will soon consider fare hikes of up to 10 percent on average and the agency is moving forward on the elimination of early-morning weekend service along with efforts to boost advertising and parking revenue.
"There's got to be a balance between asking taxpayers who never use the T to pay the bills and asking riders who use it every day to pay the bills," Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack said Monday, after the report was approved by the board but before it was made public.
The control board, which was created this year and appointed this summer after a series of winter failures on the T, acknowledged in the report that it faced tough choices in the months ahead.
In the report's opening letter to lawmakers, the control board wrote: "The FMCB is now moving from analysis to action. Many of the FMCB's decisions will be difficult and unpopular. But continued inaction on the MBTA is simply not an option. The riding public, MBTA employees, taxpayers, and the region's economy demand a well-functioning, efficient MBTA."
The report also ticked through items that have already had public airing: the ballooning cost of the Green Line Extension, the $7.3 billion state-of-good-repair described as "dire," and the agency's structural deficit that will widen without steps taken to close it.
"Reducing and soon eliminating the MBTA's structural operating budget deficit is an urgent priority, not just as a matter of fiscal responsibility, but to free up funds now going to operating expenses to meet pressing maintenance and other capital needs," the report said.
The report also detailed efforts to prepare for the current winter season, disclosing that more than $90 million had been spent on the effort - following initial forecasts of about $85 million in winterization spending.
Tens of thousands of feet of new third rail and third-rail heating systems have been added along with snow fencing, and the T has built 40 steel plows for Red and Orange line trains and is procuring an additional 40, according to the report.
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