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New County Gas Tax Could Fund ECAT Buses
January 14, 2009
The Escambia County Commission is considering a gasoline tax to keep ECAT transit buses on the road, but one commissioner is against the idea because ECAT provides fewer services in North Escambia.
At a Pensacola Beach retreat, commissioners discussed a 3 to 5 cent levy on gas in the county for public transportation.
District 5 Commissioner Kevin White said he would not support the gas tax, because fewer buses run in his district, calling the proposal a “hard sell”. Only one county bus runs north of Ten Mile Road. That bus, which runs three times daily from Pensacola to Century, has less than 8,000 riders per year.
The other four commissioners agreed that they would support a gas tax increase for ECAT.
The county contributes $7.6 million toward ECAT’s annual budget. A 3 cent gas tax would provide an estimated $3.1 million of that figure, and it would cost the average county citizen $15 per year, according to study the ECAT Citizen Advisory Committee.
A large portion of the tax gas burden would fall on people that do not live in Escambia County, according to Commissioner Gene Valentino. He estimated that 40 to 60 percent of the $3.1 million would come from people buying gas as they were passing through Escambia County.
Commissioner Wilson Robertson said he would support the gas tax, but only if the property taxes were reduced by a similar amount.
No official vote was taken on the gas tax at Tuesday’s meeting of the Escambia County Commission. Commissioners were meeting in a retreat at the Hilton Pensacola Beach Gulf Front.
The commission’s first draft of next year’s budget is due in July.
Comments
19 Responses to “New County Gas Tax Could Fund ECAT Buses”
William
Admin
The numbers you have indicate what ECAT does NOT want the public to know. Each “ride” a “person” takes is counted as another “rider’ implying that many “persons” ride the bus.
Your estimation that the average full time rider rides a bus 250 days a year reveals that Route 60 from Century to Pensacola has thirty two (32) actual persons who ride the bus daily to and from Pensacola. That figure compares closely to the statistics reported in the zip code breakdown of number of riders.
The 145,883 “riders” who ride the busiest bus in the county on Fairfield Drive account for only 584 actual persons riding that bus.
What a joke, four of the commissioners want us to pony up an additional 3 cents a gallon so that 32 person can ride a bus to and from Century and so 584 person can ride the Fairfield Drive route.
White may be only one vote, but hopefully he can sway two more votes to kill this issue.
In response to poster Ben Armato:
ECAT recently was quoted in one of the PNJ stories about raising the gas tax and said, “The average cost to a county resident for a 3 cent gas tax would be about $15 a year, according to a study last year by the ECAT Citizen Advisory Committee”.
More ECAT smoke screen. ECAT is famous for making the numbers say what they want them to say. If their proposed 3cent a gallon increase will only cost the average driver $15, then the average driver who drives an average 20,000 miles a year must be getting 40 mpg and only uses 500 gals. of gas a year.
I drive 20,000 miles a year and around town average 12mpg and use 1,666 gals. of gas. The proposed 3 cent a gallon increase will cost me an additional $50 a year.
Same amount for my wife’s car.
This doesn’t include what I use in my boat, lawn tractor, weed eater and chain saw.
Those who have small businesses and who have to use an automobile or trucks in their business will be hit the hardest.
Robertson’s suggested that property taxes be reduced the same amount as the proposed gas tax increase. Is he going to reduce my property taxes by $50 a year or suggest that I’d have to buy a new $40,000 car that gets 40mpg to equalize the gas tax increase?
Besides how many time have we ever seen politicians cut taxes until they were forced to like we made them by passing proposition 1.
Let’s hope White sticks to his guns and keeps on opposing this proposal.
A total of 7,819 riders took the Route 60 bus that runs from Century to Penscola over a one year period. That compares to 145,883 riders on the busiest bus in the county in the Fairfield Drive area.
These numbers were in a story we ran here:
http://www.northescambia.com/?p=5800
One rider=one person riding one day. One single person that rides the bus 250 days a year would could as 250 riders.
I have the numbers on each bus route in the county that I pulled the above numbers from for the story on the Century/Molino bus. I’ll try to locate and total them for you sometime over the weekend.
William
Admin
DD
If you want to have some idea about how many actual persons who use the buses the addresses below will provide that information. The statistics were tabulated in 2000 so have probably changed to some degree. As previous mentioned, the ECAT spokesperson gave information that indicates there is now 1,550 riders.
The statistics at:
http://www.city-data.com/county/Escambia_County-FL.html reports in 2000 that only 1,379 PERSONS rode a bus.
For a zip code breakdown of the riders for a particular zip code area go to the following:
http://www.city-data.com/zips/32501.html
The zip breakdown shows that there are only 81 riders who use the bus in the zip codes making up Cantonment, Century, Walnut Hill, NW Escambia County and Molino which is Whites district.
There are only a few hundred riders in Robinsons, Robertsons and Valentino’s district.
To see each zip code demographics for all zips in Escambia County one by one, change the 32501 to the zip code to be searched for: 32503, 32504, Etc.
DD you were lied to. Whoever at ECAT told you that three million riders used the Buses inflated the real number by almost 1,000%. Since there is only around 325,000 persons including children living in Escambia County it would be very difficult for 3 million to ride a bus.
Recently ECAT spokesperson, Nancy Lohr was quoted in the Pensacola News Journal reporting that in order to raise the 3.1 million dollars needed to fund ECAT the present number of riders can’t afford to pay the bill. She says that to raise the 3.1 mill. each person who rides would have to spend $40 a week. According to her statment, using basic math, it computes that there are 1,550 persons who use the buses assuming they ride 50 weeks a year.
The total cost to fund ECAT from all sources including Federal and State Grants of over 8 million dollars, much less the 3.1 million asked for from Escambia Taxpayers is not something that the 325,000 citizens who do not use the system should have to pay for The 1,550 persons who do use them should foot the bill.
Crazy idea, but how about people that ride the bus, pay for the bus!
I spoke with a gentlman at ECAT just yesterday, Jan. 14. He, name unknown, did tell me that the fee to ride the buses, whether it be from Century to downtown Pensacola, or 1 block, was a flat rate of $1.75 fare, one way. That being said, I asked him how many people actually participated in riding the ECAT buses, and his quote to me was “3 million a year.” Thus, $5,250,000 taken in in fares on a yearly basis. With that being said, he referred me to a Mr. Wilcox, whom I have yet to speak with, about an average daily count of riders. I still have not been able to find that out.
My husband and I have many, many times been in our own vehicles in proximity of these buses, on their routes, and witness them, the buses and drivers, on many occasions, getting off of the scheduled route they are supposed to take, to go out of their way to pick up or drop off riders at their homes, etc., and on many occasions, sit and wait for these ECAT participants to conduct their business in whatever location they asked to be picked up or let off at, while the buses waited. On some instances, we’ve even witnessed no one getting on or off of the bus, while we were stopped behind it, just the driver carrying on a conversation with an acquaintance.
Thus being said, in no way shape or form should the citizens of this county, let alone anyone traveling through this county, be held accountable for supporting a busing system that is being mishandled in this fashion. I myself have never used the ECAT buses, but if it did come to it one day, I would greatly pay my own way, especially if the fee were to be increased to help with the funding of it.
By the way, on another note, I did contact the Santa Rosa County Administrator, and Santa Rosa County does not have any public means of transportation.
Ben, the problem is that the BOCC will never decrease your property taxes. They’ll go up every year because the property appraiser annually increases the value of your home. Keep in mind, only temporary relief was granted by Amendment 1, which caused the politicians to pull their head out of the proverbial feeding trough. The tax loss will be made up in fees paid in all kinds of areas from your electric and phone bills to higher MSBU’s as the BOCC seeks to keep the status quo.
I’m from Missouri, so show me the exact numbers of ECAT rider ship. With those numbers, let the public decide if we want to spend more for bus service. However, the BOCC won’t publish the numbers because it’ll cause uproar with the voters. They know the numbers are low, really low. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know because one can see empty busses running all over town. Not too long ago the term “significant increase” in rider ship was being tossed around in an effort to get more money. Well, just what does that mean? If the Century/Molino route increased from one rider to three, is that a two hundred percent increase? Sort of, but three passengers doesn’t justify the cost of operating the big bus and driver.
Say NO to a gas tax increase; raise the passenger fare instead! For what it’s worth, riders could ride all over town for a donated can of beans back a month or so ago. What a deal!
Perhaps it is better to continue funding ECAT – since it must be funded because of grants – through our property tax as is the current method rather than allowing tourists and those passing through who stop to by gas here help pay for the project. It’s estimated that that an increase in a gas tax would cost us each less than $20.00 a year. Imagine reducing your property tax which you are forced to pay right now by deferring some of that cost to those who don’t live here.
I agree with almost everyone on that has commented. Way to go Commissioner White, why would he vote for something that is hardly a dent in a North Escambia residents day. Gene Valentino might have a somewhat short and jaunty drive to work in the mornings, how about North Escambia residents who work in Pensacola? They fill up a gas tank AT LEAST once a week if not more. My family works in Cantonment, Beulah, and Pine Forest repectively. So when “out-of-towners” will be supposedly be such and such a percentage of the bill, I think Valentino has some wires crossed because it will be North Escambia residents paying the bulk of for a convience that is used in the south end of the county. Make the people who use ECAT pay, don’t those of us with vehicles have enough to pay for with routine maintence and whatnot?
This would be an unfair tax. The ones that use ECAT services should be the ones paying for it. I am fortunate and have a car. Don’t penalize me when I don’t use ECAT. If I should have to use it in the future, then I will pay the fees then.
Good for Kevin White for saying he does not support this tax. Other commissioners need to follow along with him.
The BOCC just doesn’t get it. NO, NO, NO…. to any new tax to support ECAT! Remember the City of Pensacola pulled their funding and refused to pay for their fair share for use of the bus system; however, it is the city’s residents that benefit the most and are the highest end users of the service.
Looks like Kevin White is the only one keeping his position again, come next election. When gas works its way back up to $4 a gallon there will be some very unpopular commissioners… even more so than they already are.
Why don’t we just increase the fee to ride the bus? Simply place the financial burden on the people who use the service.
The article states “it would cost the average county citizen $15 per year, according to study the ECAT Citizen Advisory Committee.” If you follow that logic at .05 per gallon you cannot use more than 25 gallons of fuel per month (average), I can easily use that in 3 or 4 days, so do most of the people I know.
The article states “A large portion of the tax gas burden would fall on people that do not live in Escambia County, according to Commissioner Gene Valentino. He estimated that 40 to 60 percent of the $3.1 million would come from people buying gas as they were passing through Escambia County.” I would like to know where Commissioner Gene Valentino gets his numbers from, that is a wide spread on percentage points. With all due respect, to me it sounds like the numbers where pulled out of the air.
When Commissioner Gene Valentino states that “A large portion of the tax gas burden would fall on people that do not live in Escambia County” I’m going to try to state this politely as I can, it sounds like political double speak to me. ALL of Escambia County cititzens are going to pay their share of the gas tax 100% of the time, not 40 to 60 percent of the time.
I say place the burden on the people who use the ECAT, if ECAT cannot sustain itself, shut it down.
Having a meeting to discuss budget shortfalls at a Beach Front “Retreat” speaks volumes about where our elected officials hearts are!
Are the county commissioners not able to follow simple logic? If I am buying gas for my car, it’s reasonable to assume I’m not going to ride the bus because I’m driving my car. Yet they plan to tax my gas purchase to fund the bus system! I’m sure the bus system is of great value to the people who use it and I’m glad it’s available, but the people who use the service should pay for it. ECAT needs to either charge more for their services or rework their routes. How long are taxpayers going to stand by silently while their taxes increase to pay for services they will never use?
Is a meeting at a Gulf front “retreat” on the beach a proper place to be pondering budget shortages. This gives me an indication of just where their mind set is.
what are yall thinking .with the price of gas on the rise and people out of a job , you want to tact on a 3 to 5 cents on gas, i say let the city put bill. or cut back on the number of buses running. then you can let the drivers work a split shift. be cause the way i see it if you dont have money ,or a job two things for sure you want ride a bus and you now going to buy gas. i know you thinking the the workers wont go for a split shift. but isee it that a half a job is better than no job
Why don’t we just increase the bed tax at hotels? That way almost every dollar will come from people pass through the county, not from our residents.
Just because I own a car, I should not penalized and force to pay for public transportation. Tax my gas to pay for roads because I use them. Don’t tax my gas because I don’t use the bus.