Municipal Services Committee - Regular Meeting

He doesn't like to be heard.

We've got 2.50. And I'm going to call the meeting to order.

Valley Transit Commission, we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, please.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And then next we'll begin with the roll call of membership, please. Kristen.

Thank you. Mike Patsa.

Here.

Diane Dexter. Here. Michael Brown.

Here.

Carol Casmore. Here. Brad Meltzer. Here. Larry Wordinger.

Here.

Dennis Doherty.

Here.

Mayua Tao is excused. Ron Torrance. Present. Matt Lawrence is excused. Brian Borchardt is excused. Greg Vandehey is excused. And Chairperson George Dearborn. Here. A quorum has been established. Thank you. Thank you much.

Then we'll move on to a motion to approve the minutes, please. I need a motion to approve.

Yes, we'll move our second either way.

And a second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Are there any questions on the minutes? If not, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion, any opposed? No? Thank you. Motion carries. Then public appearances, I see none. There's none remote, correct, Brian? That's correct. All right. Then we'll move on to action items. And the first action item is rule of payments. And I need a motion first to approve. So moved. Second. And I have a motion to second. So Kristen, can you go over the payments, please?

Yes, thank you, Chair. So in your packets is the May 2026 payments that we issued. The total is approximately $558,000. Just kind of a highlight of some of the main sections of our payments. Administrative expenses was approximately $33,000. Largest expense in that category would be for utilities, gas, and electric. Nothing else was out of the ordinary within that section. Uh, vehicle maintenance expenses was approximately 186,000, um, 84,000 of that, which would have been our largest expense category was for repair parts. Um, those are payments that were primarily paid to new flyer Gillig and Wisconsin Kenmore. Uh, building maintenance expenses was around 14,000, which included 11,000 in consulting fees for the Whitman phase two and transit center projects. And then operations expenses was around 88,000, which included, um, two payments for fuel around 68,000. And then our ADA pair of transit and ancillary service expense totaled around $236,000. Any questions on anything?

Okay, I'm not hearing any questions. We have a motion to second. All those in favor of approving the payments, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thanks. Motion carries. Then we'll move on to the second action item, which is award recognition for wireless equipment and data plan. Any motion to approve, please? Motion to approve. Second. Motion to second. Ron, if you could go over this, please.

Thank you, Chair. So we use cellular and data services for cell phones, of course, data is for in the bus, providing GPS, various other equipment within the bus. We work combined with the City of Appleton's contract before, and the City of Appleton, the rest of the city is going on with another carrier, and we've elected to stay with Cellcom, because quite frankly, they don't need to fix it if it's not broken. We want to continue that. We want to enter into a five-year contract looking at an annual expense of approximately $15,000 a year over the life of the contract and be taken out of our regular budget. So we would ask for recommendation to authorize us to enter into a five-year contract with SELCOM. I'll be glad to answer any questions anybody has. Questions? Where's this sitting on? Do you know?

I'm just curious, are they saving money or why did they switch?

What I've been told, there was a department within the city that was having coverage issues. Where our bus routes go, we have not experienced that same thing, so we did not change. but one of the departments that is all over the city was hitting some dead spots that was imperative for them to be able to get through for both text and voice was my recollection.

Yeah, my recollection is they're going with Verizon.

Yeah, I think that's accurate, yeah.

That's similar to what happened to the Village. We had to switch to Verizon because of coverage issues. But if you're not having a problem, yeah, it certainly works.

Any other questions?

Any other questions? If not, we have a motion and a second to approve. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Motion carries. We'll move on to information items. And the first information item is the financial report. Kristen, if you could go through that, please.

Thank you, Chair. So we have the income statement through the end of May. At the end of May, we're about 40% through the budget year. Looking at revenues for the month of May, we had approximately, excuse me, 66,000 in revenues for a total year to date of 373. This is just a little bit slightly more than last year, but we're right now at 29% of the budget for that. Our total operating expenses for May is 960,000, or about 37% of the budget. In general, salaries, supplies and materials, and purchase services are below that 40% benchmark. Administrative expenses, utilities, and repairs and maintenance are over that benchmark. If you go to the second page of the income statement, I'm sorry, the third page. This is for our purchase transportation expenses. This is at 36% of budget, and it's just slightly higher than last year. This page has the expenses broken down by service. And you can see that Valley Transit 2 and Connector are our greatest expenses, which aligns with them being our most used paratransit service. Any questions?

Okay. Not hearing any. Move on to the next information item, which is the ridership report. Again, Crystal.

Yes. Thank you, Chair. So the next page is for the monthly ridership. That's in your packets. At the top, the top third of this shows the information about the fixed route. We are down 6% in monthly rides, which is about 3,000 less rides than May of last year. Wanting to point out that the Wisco fairs, which include the E-fairs, Appleton Area School District, Fox Valley Tech, and Lawrence, all those together, that utilization was around 84% for May, which was really, really good. In the center of the sheet is the information for demand response. We had a 5% increase in rides from prior year, which is about 430 more rides. Like I mentioned with the income statement, VT2 and Connector continue to show increase in ridership from last year. The other ride types have seen minor fluctuations. Then at the bottom of the page is a graph that shows the combined total ridership between fixed route and demand response. In May, we gave a total of over 54,000 rides.

Anyone? If there are no questions, we'll move on to requests for future agenda items. And if you're not aware of any, as we say every meeting, if you have something, please contact us, and we can certainly put it on the agenda. Then finally, not finally, but the next is the next meeting date, which we're recommended canceling the July 7th and having the meeting on July 21st. With that, we'll move to a motion to adjourn, please. Motion to adjourn. Second. Motion to second. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Thank you. Motion carries. We're adjourned.

Thank you.