Tyler officials reject plan aimed at saving money on paratransit services

Jan. 11--Tyler officials have rejected a plan that would use a donation to help provide transportation services to people with disabilities. Instead, the city will continue providing paratransit services as is.

The city had come up with the plan as a way to save money on the city's paratransit services, which operate through Tyler Transit.

Paratransit is a ride-sharing service operated through the city meant to transport people with disabilities who would not be able to use traditional bus service.

The Tyler City Council voted to scrap the plan designed to save money on those services at a regular meeting on Wednesday at the recommendation of city staff who run Tyler Transit.

Russ Jackson, who oversees Tyler Transit for the city, told the City Council that there won't be any impact on existing paratransit services because a local company continues to provide the ride-sharing.

"The whole project was to see if we could do some services cheaper to save taxpayer money, and this (project) was just eliminated through rules and regulations," Jackson said in an interview.

The proposed project would have allowed the city to use $100,000 worth of in-kind donated services to put toward running paratransit services and allowed the city to liquidate some old vehicles.

The city put out a request for bids on the project in May 2018 and received a single response from NDMJ LLC Management, a Tyler-based taxi service. The City Council's action rejected that single bid.

"We were looking at, 'Can it be done cheaper?'" Jackson said of the process. "There was inclination that it possibly was (possible), and so we were listening to that, and so we tried. The only way you can find out is put it out for bids."

He said the Federal Transit Authority funds about 80 percent of the paratransit service, and the city funds the remaining 20 percent. The $100,000 worth of in-kind donated services would have been used to reduce Tyler's responsibility, thereby saving money, he said.

"It's not enough savings according to FTA," Jackson said. He said the agency did a cost analysis and found that the savings would be too slight to justify the change.

"They're not in agreement with doing it because they're saying, 'Why are you doing it? It's efficient now, and there's not much money difference in savings, so why would you do it?' And what it gets into is you just don't want to make a change, when, really, if it's not broke don't fix it."

Mayor Martin Heines told the City Council before the vote that the city needs to comply with whatever the FTA says because the agency pays the majority of the city's cost of running public bus and paratransit services.

"If we don't play by their rules, they pull all those funds, and they also ask us to pay back previous funds that they've granted to us," Heines said. "So there is no logical reason for us to put ourselves in the position to be at odds with FTA. So let's not do that."

TWITTER and INSTAGRAM: @_erinmansfield

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