Pair of council standing committees to eyeball transit changes

A transit funding and corridor development referral was made to Springfield City Council by a member, but his referral was significantly changed by the mayor by the time it reached yesterday’s meeting of the council Committee of the Whole.

Nevertheless, the meeting ended with a 7-1 vote in favor of the mayor’s substitute referral.

Councilmember Brandon Jenson submitted the referral Oct. 6 to be taken up at a council meeting, but Mayor Jeff Schrag offered a substitute referral.

Jenson’s recommendation sought to examine goals established in a transit study performed by City Utilities of Springfield, which runs the city’s bus system. CU completed a transit study titled Connect SGF in 2023, and it contained three sets of recommendations – short term, medium term and long term. CU subsequently adopted the study’s short-term recommendations, and Jenson was seeking to have council examine its medium-term suggestions.

Among suggestions from the CU study are to grow the transit system by a number of means, including establishing a new east-west route and expanding frequency on other key routes, as well as deploying new services, like micro-transit zones and potential regional services and streamlining route alignments. The plan – already written for CU by consultant Olsson Inc. – would improve travel times by streamlining alignments and offering frequency improvements.

Substitute referral
Schrag explained that his substitute referral changes three areas.

It refers a research portion regarding transit routes and operation to an existing council committee, the Community Involvement Committee, instead of following Jenson’s recommendation to set up an ad hoc committee.

It employs an outside consulting firm to gather data and make a recommendation, with the cost to be split between CU and the city’s general fund.

Upon acceptance by the Community Involvement Committee, the substitute refers the matter to the Finance and Administration Committee to explore funding opportunities for expanded transit services and to make funding recommendations.

“This represents the primary component of the workload, which is identifying any additional funding, either by the reallocation of existing resources or for new funding for transit,” Schrag said.

Asked to detail his process for developing the substitute referral, Schrag said it came about through conversations with CU, which already has a consultant in place. That consultant made a white paper that Schrag submitted to Jenson, who offered comments, and Schrag returned those changes to CU for the consultant to make changes. He then enlisted Councilmember Derek Lee, who also referred the matter to council, and Lee suggested getting the Ozarks Transportation Organization involved. OTO had a look at the recommendations, too, Schrag said.

Councilmember Monica Horton asked Jenson if he saw continuity between his request and the mayor’s recommendation.

Jenson pointed out two additional differences – one is that the original referral called for the identification of a specific corridor in alignment with Connect SGF and for the development of a transit-oriented development plan to integrate transportation, land use and economic development to present a holistic framework to a committee.

“This substitute referral explicitly states that there will be no specific corridor identified and does not contemplate a review of our land development code or incentives to get the kind of density that we know we would need along the corridor,” he said.

Jenson said the original referral charged the ad hoc committee to analyze the organizational and operational structure of the transit system and determine if changes were called for.

“I’m really looking at whether the very unique circumstance we have of our utility provider also being the transit provider – which to my knowledge is the only example of that in the country – whether that provides for the most efficient and effective operations of our transit system,” he said. “This substitute referral does not include any of that analysis.”

In fact, he said, the contract that the substitute referral incorporates places the responsibility of working with the contractor with CU.

“It would be doubtful that that would be an element of analysis,” he said.

Horton further asked if the substitute referral was worth supporting.

“Is it going to get us from Point A to Point B in terms of where we would like to go?” she asked.

Jenson referred her question to Schrag.

The mayor said the referral does identify a possible enhanced service corridor, and it was important to include that, because it was a priority of Jenson’s.

“An examination of the entire transit system – it is my opinion that at this step, that might be a bridge too far,” Schrag said. “I continue to believe that funding is the key. How do we identify funding if we want to expand transit, because transit is not a self-funding entity?”

Schrag called funding the most important aspect of the referral.

“If we identify the funding, we could rebuild our transit system any way we want to,” he said. “I believe the major roadblock is the funding, and this is a chicken-and-egg argument – which one comes first.”

He said the Finance and Administration Committee should get the Community Involvement Committee recommendations quickly so it can look at alternate funding.

Horton said she could see the substitute referral as a starting point, but she said it’s incumbent upon council to acknowledge and incorporate the initial intent of the referral.

“If we’re not doing that, it feels like we’re spinning our wheels,” she said.

Benefits of ad hoc approach
Jenson said there was discussion at the original referral about whether an ad hoc committee would be appropriate. He outlined several large items already being worked on by the Community Involvement Committee, among them an issue about driveway and access points in the land development code, a right to counsel ordinance for rental tenants, legislative priorities and utility growth planning.

“Whoever the decision-maker is, they need to have a level of expertise to be making well-informed decisions,” he said. “That’s going to take a lot of time from the Community Involvement Committee, just to build up that level of expertise, and create a bottleneck of these other legislative issues that you all are going to be working through.”

He said an ad hoc committee would bring in a broad-based coalition, including transit users and business leaders whose employees rely on the system, whereas the CIC would have only four council members.

“I don’t know how often the members of the Community Involvement Committee utilize the transit system or if they ever have,” Jenson said.

Jenson said there is a wealth of data already available from the Connect SGF report, the city’s Forward SGF comprehensive plan and the OTO, as well as information from the American Planning Association about necessary density levels to support transit development.

“That information already exists, and it’s pretty accessible,” he said. “I see it more as a step to show that we’re doing something rather than trying to do something meaningful.”

Jenson added that having one council committee create recommendations and having another figuring out how to fund them creates opportunities for disjointedness.

He said he also has concerns about the process by which the substitute bill came about.

“We do have a clear plan in Connect SGF,” Jenson said. “I mean, it clearly outlines the set of recommendations that should be implemented.”

He added that a broad coalition would be necessary to get there, and this is the right time to bring in a diversity of voices.

Councilmember Craig Hosmer said he was concerned about CU serving as lead for contract management.

“They manage the consultant, they coordinate the day-to-day progress, schedule deliverables,” he said. “It seems like you’re giving the entity that’s in charge of transit right now the authority to pick the consultant, and who you pick as a consultant drives what your answer is going to be.”

Hosmer said it’s not yet time to hire a consultant.

“We need to figure out what the city wants – reinvent, reimagine what transportation could be in Springfield,” he said.

“If we limit ourselves to what City Utilities wants to do, or what they think is doable, rather than what we think we deserve as a city, I think we’re unduly limiting ourselves,” he said. “The good thing about a council committee is to think big – to think about what we could be, and how we could reimagine transit.”

Hosmer said the original referral offered more depth for what it would examine.

“If we just look at what a consultant wants to look at, we may as well not hire a consultant because we know what we’re going to get,” Hosmer said.

Councilmember Bruce Adib-Yazdi said he agreed that going through a standing council committee would not be efficient. Additionally, he said a broad community coalition would be needed to achieve the funding mechanism.

“Not including those folks from the beginning is just going to be a potential roadblock,” he said. “Once we get to the point of trying to include them, they’re going to say, well, you’ve already made up your mind.”

CU’s role
Lee said CU just went through the process of reimagining transit and spoke to stakeholders extensively, and the process resulted in many improvements.

“It’s not a little bit of money; it’s a ton of money every year,” he said. “We can all say it’s great to have more, but it’s great to have more housing.”

He added that only 0.1% of the city population uses transit now, whereas 0.2% use trails – a possible better investment on behalf of people without cars.

“We need to be imagining ways to get money, not imagining ways that City Utilities could do it differently,” Lee said. “I just think that’s almost insulting to all the work they do all the time.”

Adib-Yazdi said council is not trying to help the 0.1% but to help the 99.9% understand that they could use the transit system if it were a little bit different or better.

Jenson said he used the Forward SGF comprehensive plan as his guidepost, and it showed that transit was among the top three concerns of community members.

He also expressed his frustration with the process that punts the proposal through multiple council committees to not end up with a plan that ties land use decisions and economic incentives to make transit corridors a reality in the community.

“I feel like this body isn’t really willing to listen to fellow council members and respect whenever they’re trying to elevate issues and bring data and plans to back that up,” Jenson said. “I know all of our hearts are in the right place, but it’s such a frustrating experience.”

At the end of the meeting, Jenson made a motion for his original referral, which would move the issue out of the Committee of the Whole and to a regular Monday night City Council meeting. That motion failed 5-3, with support from Jenson, Adib-Yazdi and Hosmer. Horton was absent from the vote.

Schrag then put his substitute referral – moving the issue to the Community Involvement Committee – to a vote, and it passed 7-1, with only Hosmer voting against it.