TriMet's Measure 26-119, its request to issue $125 million in bonds to pay for new buses and bus stop improvements, is where I started this year's endorsement season. To make sense of the measure I had to rummage about in TriMet's books.
First, the need is there. Wikipedia's entry on TriMet's buses (more complete than what I could find on TriMet's site) suggests that 251 of TriMet's 660 buses date from the early 1990s. New buses today sell for about $500,000 each, suggesting that TriMet can reasonably say that it needs to spend about $125 million on new buses.
The question is whether TriMet should be issuing bonds to pay for the buses, or be setting aside a certain amount each year to pay for replacements. Put another way, is this bond issue the result of TriMet's board and management neglecting their duties over the past 10 years by not saving up to replace the bus fleet? TriMet's own fact sheet on the measure meekly acknowledges that the board and management failed at their tasks: it says "We had planned to buy buses annually since 1997. However, economic conditions have not been favorable, so we delayed about half of the purchases in order to offset the decline in revenues and not cut service to riders." The bolding is mine: this neglect, according to TriMet itself, goes back for 13 years. The WIkipedia data is more generous to TriMet, indicating that it was buying buses annually, or nearly so, until 2005, and then stopped until 2009. The years skipped were not recession years, but actually boom years.
Let's look at TriMet's current operations (link to TriMet's annual report, a 46-page PDF, here). In the year that ended on June 30, 2010, TriMet received $94 million at the farebox, $35 million from auxiliary passenger revenue (disabled transit grants, maybe?), $209 million from the payroll and self-employment taxes, $11 million from property taxes, and $84 million from operating grants, for total operating revenue of about $433 million. It also received capital grants of about $110 million. TriMet owes about $288 million on revenue bonds and $28 million on general obligation bonds. (A revenue bond is a bond that is repaid from only a specific source of revenue. A general obligation bond is one that can be repaid from anything, one that the agency is required to pay whether revenue comes in or not.)
There likely wouldn't be any controversy about giving TriMet $125 million for new buses if it weren't for the proposed light rail line to Milwaukie, which is to cost about $1.5 billion -- twelve times the cost of the new buses and miscellaneous improvements. "How can TriMet borrow money for buses," say the critics, "which it needs for daily operations, at the same time that it wants to spend $1.5 billion on a new train line?" One answer is that out of the $1.5 billion, only $40 million is coming from TriMet's pocket. Who can resist building a billion-dollar train line at a cost of only $40 million? Looked at from the taxpayers' point of view, although the line will cost TriMet only $40 million, it will cost state and local taxpayers $750 million (half its cost; the feds are paying for the other half), one way or another.
I believe that TriMet (and public agencies generally) should be budgeting for their operating costs, including replacement of things that wear out, such as buses, from their operating income, and submitting the expansion projects to the voters. Here, TriMet is submitting its operating costs to the voters and sending the implicit message that it can't afford to expand MAX with the Milwaukie light rail line and also buy new buses to maintain its current bus service. If it can't afford to do both then it should pay its ordinary expenses, including replacing equipment, before it takes on a new project. For that and other reasons, I am voting "no" on Measure 26-119.