The basic message was stark: VIA faces a deficit of $126 million over the next five years, even including the $93 million it will receive this year in federal stimulus funds through the CARES Act.
That prompted renewed calls by members of its board for an increased share in the San Antonio sales tax, though city leaders have in the past month put off that question, reluctant to discuss even its timing.
To balance the budget, VIA officials say they might have to cut bus routes, reduce wage increases and staff, freeze pension fund contributions and defer capital spending.
That last item translates into a dream deferred for VIA Reimagined, a much-publicized plan to build a network of sleeker, more frequent buses.
VIA CEO Jeff Arndt said the “bus rapid transit” (BRT) plan that would reduce some wait times on busy routes to as little as seven or eight minutes might not be able to be funded until 2024, if the audit’s projections hold.
But a lot can happen in the meantime, he said.
“I would not say VIA Reimagined is dead for four years,” Arndt said. “These projections by the auditor are preliminary and, I think, somewhat pessimistic. They’re based on projections of the city sales tax revenue, and we still don’t have enough good data to know where those numbers are headed.”
Arndt has predicted losses this year of $11 million in fares, $51 million in sales tax revenue — VIA’s major funding source — and another $3 million in city funding.
On Wednesday, he said it might be July before all parties involved have sufficient data for a better sales tax projection.
The agency faces a $12 million shortfall over the next five years in its employee pension fund contributions, he said.
Previously, VIA had said it expected its sales tax revenue for the current fiscal year to be about $202 million. But an economist contracted by the transit agency estimated those numbers won’t be reached until late 2022 or early 2023.
VIA will resume collecting fares Monday, something it hasn’t done since March 21. It has suspended 10 of its 92 routes and has shifted dozens of others into much-less-frequent “Sunday” schedules, resulting in intervals of an hour or more for riders.
“We can’t run at a deficit and we don’t have the ability to print money, unlike the federal government,” Arndt said last week. “The bottom line of this whole discussion is that as early as 2021 we will face some level of service reduction.”
There’s a much-argued-over pot of city money that would solve these problems.
Members of the transit agency’s board spoke up at a recent meeting in favor asking city voters to reallocate a 1/8-cent share of the sales tax that now goes to protect the Edwards Aquifer and shift it to VIA.
Arndt said his auditors figure that would amount to about $152 million over four years, enough to cover the expected $126 million deficit.
Meeting remotely on Zoom, several board members — “spontaneously,” Arndt said — voiced their desire to get that 1/8-cent tax into the VIA budget.
Board Chairwoman Hope Andrade said she had “lived a life of optimism,” but that the auditor’s dire news convinced her it would take VIA years to simply return to its pre-COVID service.
“We need to protect that 1/8-cent for VIA,” she said.
“We need to start the discussion that we are the (city’s) lifeline.” board secretary Ezra Johnson concurred.
Board member Kristi Villanueva called it “absolutely, utterly important for us to get that message over to people immediately.”
“I saw text messages today from other city leaders about their thinking (the money) wouldn’t be needed for VIA. I was very distressed,” she added.
Councilwomen Shirley Gonzales and Ana Sandoval said Wednesday they supported the 1/8 cent going to transportation, but they weren’t ready to offer specifics about how it should be spent or when voters should decide the matter.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who consistently has campaigned for better mass transit, said late last month that there might not be enough “bandwidth as a community” to plan for a November election that would include the 1/8-cent issue.
Nirenberg was reluctant Wednesday to engage in a discussion that many civic leaders agree is premature, since tens of thousands of San Antonians still might be out of work in November, and the city could even face a rebound in coronavirus infections — hardly the time to ask voters to focus on anything but personal health and safety.
“Businesses and governmental agencies across our community are coping with reduced revenues because of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the city of San Antonio, which has a $200 million shortfall for the current fiscal year,” Nirenberg said in an emailed statement. “We are only three months into this situation, and we don’t know how quickly the economy will recover.”
Whether the question appears on any ballot is up to the board of the Advanced Transportation District, a taxing entity created under Texas law in 2004 whose board is identical to VIA’s 11-member board of directors.
Complicating matters somewhat is that the aquifer protection program currently funded by the 1/8-cent tax remains popular among City Council members.
Ideologically, most of the council, Arndt and Nirenberg are birds of a feather — they all want aquifer protection, better transportation, housing, job opportunities and education.
None of them likely would argue with Arndt’s mass transit mantra, that no housing or jobs or poverty program envisioned for the rebuilding of San Antonio’s economy will work effectively without efficient affordable transit for those hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis.
But which programs get fully funded and become models of good government and which go without or limp along for years, are questions that will far outlast the pandemic.
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