Transit referral issue highlights City Council tensions

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At a special meeting yesterday, Springfield City Councilmember Brandon Jenson objected to a rerouting of a committee referral he crafted to improve the city’s bus transit system.

Mayor Jeff Schrag, on the other hand, said he was adhering to council priorities by offering the substitute referral.

Jenson has made transit his signature issue, starting in his responses to a March 2023 Springfield Business Journal candidate questionnaire where he prioritized reducing crime and accessibility of city businesses, parks and other amenities through car, bike or transit.

“Once those two items have been established, we can begin to see economic opportunities, we can begin to see economic opportunities that are available in our community,” Jenson said at the time.

On Oct. 6, 2025, Jenson made a referral to study transit funding and corridor development. He wanted the issue to be studied by council’s Committee of the Whole – all members of council – and to set up an ad hoc committee to provide feedback, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

Schrag came back on May 5 with a substitute referral to direct the matter to council’s Community Involvement Committee and to use an outside consulting firm, Olsson Inc., with the $33,000 cost to be split between the city and City Utilities of Springfield, which operates the city’s bus system.

At a special council meeting yesterday, the body voted 9-0 to refer the matter to council’s Finance and Administration Committee, which is headed by Jenson and comprises councilmembers Monica Horton, Bruce Adib-Yazdi and Craig Hosmer. There was broad agreement that transit reform is dependent upon funding, making Finance and Administration an appropriate forum for discussion while also placing Jenson’s signature issue with the committee he leads.

Council’s current priorities, defined prior to the start of this year through a consultant-led workshop process, are public safety, economic vitality, housing strategy, development processes and operational excellence. Transit is not a council priority, and that, Schrag said, is at the heart of the disagreement.

In an interview today, Schrag said Jenson tried to get transit included among the council’s priorities but was unsuccessful.

“I know he’s disappointed that at the council retreat, council did not vote to make transit a priority,” Schrag said. “This is his continued attempt to make it a priority. My job is to tell him no.”

Jenson said in a separate interview today that transit permeates most of council’s priorities.

“Transit is interwoven into almost every one of our priorities,” Jenson said. “It’s not a standalone priority, but when we were setting priorities, we agreed that transit would need to be interwoven into the work that we do. It’s clear that there wasn’t unanimous agreement on that, but that’s where we ended up.”

Asked if transit is an urgent need for the city, Schrag said no.

“I do not consider it a pressing need,” he said. “We have the transit system that Springfieldians are willing to afford.”

He said he’s open, however, to improvements if someone can demonstrate to him that the city is willing to fund them.

“City Utilities will have any transit system that the citizens are willing to subsidize or invest in,” he said. “They’ll do it. The debate is if you add more things to it, will the ridership change from what it is now, and will it change in a significant way?”

Being told ‘no’
Jenson said he believes members of the public are concerned about how council is functioning, and the mayor’s maneuvers around his transit proposal are part of the picture that they find troubling.

For proof, he pointed to council’s failure – twice – to pass a tax measure to fund a downtown convention and events center. Contributing to that failure was lack of faith by the public in council’s assurances about the benefits the center would bring, Jenson maintained.

To Jenson, it’s important that residents’ elected officials represent their values and their needs.

“We have nine individuals who have a wealth of experience and knowledge to bring to the table,” he said. “The idea that any one of us could be told no – that an idea isn’t worth bringing to the table – is frustrating in and of itself. We’re all elected to bring issues forward.”

Jenson said he’s worked under two different mayors, Schrag and his predecessor, Ken McClure.

“One was focused on the value of consensus-building,” he said, referring to McClure. “The current mayor focuses on getting things across the finish line. Both approaches have benefits and drawbacks.”

But Jenson said Schrag’s perceived approach has significant drawbacks.

“The idea that a councilperson – myself – who has dug into the research and has the passion should try to do something and then at first be told no? I don’t take that lightly,” he said.

In yesterday’s meeting, Jenson described the mayor’s maneuvering with his committee referral as a politically palatable no.

“It looks as though this is effectively to say this is as much of a no as I can win within this political environment,” he said in today’s interview with SBJ.

Jenson delivered a lengthy statement yesterday to explain his concerns about the mayor’s revised referral. His colleague, Councilperson Callie Carroll, told him at the time that she loved his feedback, though she added, “I don’t necessarily love a 10-page speech.”

Jenson piped up with a correction: It was only an eight-page speech. But in his interview today, he said it took him about three weeks to develop his comments to outline his concerns.

“I believe in a Socratic method of debate and policy development,” he said. “We’re nine individuals. I’d love to see us be able to put issues on the table – maybe not in a resolution format – that some members think are important and be able to have a detailed conversation over them. That’s not really how our government works, but I aspire to those ideals.”

He did say that Schrag asked him for feedback a few times while working on the substitute referral.

“I appreciated that,” he said.

But he said the matter ended up at yesterday’s council meeting instead of a Committee of the Whole meeting where he could thoroughly outline his proposal. That, Jenson said, was by the mayor’s design.“I had no chance to present my proposition before the mayor’s alternate was presented,” he said.

What is his proposition? Jenson said he wanted to bring together stakeholders early in the process so they could be part of decision-making. That will be key to getting from the current transit system to the one the growing city will need in the future, he said.

Jenson added he is not looking to redo any element of Connect SGF, the City Utilities consultant-designed plan for upgrading the system, released in 2023. There are three sets of recommendations in that plan, and CU has already enacted the first set, the short-term changes. Jenson said he wants to enact the medium-term plan that is already in the report: growing the system through expanded frequency, setting a new east-west fixed route, deploying microtransit and regional services, and improving travel times.

He added that CU needs to be part of those conversations, too.

“There’s a way to do it where we earn trust and also make the best policy,” he said.

As Councilmember Bruce Adib-Yazdi said at yesterday’s meeting, housing, economic vitality and development processes are linked.

“They need to be part of the same conversation – not individual silos,” Jenson said.

Inflammatory discussion
Schrag said it was unfortunate that the special meeting discussion occurred the way it did.

“I’m disappointed that Councilmember Jenson chose to say inaccurate and inflammatory things,” he said. “I worked hard to get to a palatable way to get to the meat of this.”

Schrag said finance is 95% of the issue.

“Everyone likes transit in a vacuum, but when you say, ‘Here’s the cost,’ do they prioritize it above public safety, fire, stormwater? People change their tune,” he said.

He said the transit system costs city residents about $9 million per year.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said. “You can do a lot of things with $9 million.”

Schrag said instead of a civil discussion, council had an inflammatory one.

“It reminds people of a political stunt someone is doing to bring attention to themselves and their political career,” he said. “It’s not in the best interests of the city.”

Schrag said the plan unanimously approved by council yesterday will involve eight weeks of work by the consultant, yielding efficiency of money and resources and not requiring city staff involvement.

“People have this notion that staff time is free,” he said. “Staff time is not free. A staff member doing that is not doing something else.”

Schrag noted that the nature of government is for discussions like the transit referral to take place publicly.

“If it’s a business, we can haggle in private – have a discussion, go do the research, come back,” he said. “The public’s business has to be covered in public, and it’s messy. There’s no way around it being messy.”

Schrag said he is pleased with how council is functioning.

“I’m an incrementalist,” he said, noting that means a number of small improvements that accrue over time. “When you add it all up, it becomes a big thing, but it’s not flashy.”

He added that he brings a business perspective to the mayor’s office.

“We haven’t had a businessperson as mayor in a while,” he said, noting that Jim O’Neal, who resigned in 2012, was the last one.

“My focus is on trying to get things done and get processes right and not kick cans down the road,” he said.