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Before the meeting began, there was a big Ford VTA Outreach van parked in front of Togo's. Could a disgruntled VTA employee be a guest at this meeting?

Eleven people showed up for this meeting, which started at around 7:30pm. A guest speaker, an aide for County Supervisor Liz Kniss, is supposed to be at this meeting.

Better than the TransLink universal fare card?: one member talks about his BART Plus pass and how, for as little as $56 a month, have a flash pass for most Bay Area transit operators. (The BART Plus pass is good on all VTA local and express buses as well as light rail.) The same member brought up the need for a speaker's bureau as well as more support from more organizations. In addition, we will need help from seniors' groups to go speak out and report on the mid-morning and mid-afternoon VTA committee meetings.

Next, our founder discussed VTA's proposed 2003 Fiscal Year Recommended budget. In that budget, our founder noticed that in numerous departments increases in spending for Miscellaneous or Other, with no specific mention of what the increases were for. We also mentioned how, in the budget for VTA General Manager Peter Cipolla's office on page 47 of the VTA's 2003 Fiscal Year Recommended Budget, over $580,000 in employee cost savings had disappeared under cover of undisclosed "contractual agreements" and "pay rate increases".

Sticking to the budget, our founder discussed how the VTA's reduction of $1 million in recruiting will result in exactly the situation transit riders in Santa Clara County faced in the summer and fall of 2000. That situation, where the economy was good, was when VTA could not hire the operators and mechanics necessary to keep the transit system going. (That same situation in 2000 was the cause of the creation of SCVTARU.) According to the VTA's report in the Administrative Services Division on page 67 of the VTA's 2003 Fiscal Year Recommended Budget:

Although these reductions can be afforded by the current economic downturn, we may once again find ourselves in the same position we were recently in when the economy does rebound - poorly positioned to recruit and hire people to fill key vacant positions.

SCVTARU will continue to monitor the 2003 Fiscal Year Budget situation over the next week. The VTA will vote on the budget at its June 6 Board meeting at 6:00pm.

Ken Yeager, San Jose City Councilman and an alternate on the VTA Board, stopped (briefly) to say hello at our meeting.

A good friend of SCVTARU, who sits on one of the Community Working Groups for the BART extension into Santa Clara County, detailed some of the documentation he gets from VTA regarding their plans for the BART extension into the county. He also detailed (This information can be found in the Usenet newsgroup sbay.transportation.)

Another member gave a (long) presentation for a "South Bay Trolley" that goes from Union City/Newark to Menlo Park over the Dumbarton Bridge. SCVTARU will discuss the proposal further on our list, once it is received in writing.

Our guest speaker did not show up at all. Our founder agreed to send a letter to Supervisor Kniss re: our support for an elected VTA Board.

Meeting was adjourned at 8:30pm.

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