Funding for urban-urban Ellettsville bus trips: Town council extends time, but not yet money
Rural Transit now has a way to provide on-demand public bus service to Ellettsville residents past the end of March.
That’s because Ellettsville’s town council voted unanimously at its Monday night meeting to extend the timeframe, but not the dollar amount of an appropriation it made last year.
Last year, service had been in jeopardy due to a strict interpretation by INDOT (Indiana Department of Transportation) of an existing federal funding rule—which meant Rural Trant could not tap the same kind of federal money it had previously used to pay for certain kind of trips.
The kind of trips in question are on-demand urban-to-urban bus trips outside Bloomington city limits, starting or ending inside Ellettsville. Many of Rural Transit’s riders are elderly or have disabilities.
In mid-December last year, Ellettsville’s town council approved up to $33,000 of funding to pay for those rides through the end of March.
At Monday’s town council meeting, around a dozen people took the public mic, including riders and Rural Transit drivers, to speak in favor of continuing the funding past March.
With a deadline looming, on Monday night the town council wanted to know how much of the $33,000 had been spent so far. The money is paid to Rural Transit based on actual rides given.
It is Area 10 Agency on Aging that operates Rural Transit. At Monday’s meeting, Area 10 executive director Chris Myers told town councilors that about $20,000 of the money was still unspent. Myers said she thinks the remaining $20,000 would probably be enough to get through April.
The council voted to relax the end-of-March hard stop on the arrangement. That means it now lasts until the $33,000 is exhausted. Myers thinks it will take around $43,000 more to cover the cost of rides until the end of this year. With the additional time that the town councilors bought for themselves, they will try to figure out if they can come up with the additional $43,000.
At Monday’s meeting, one possible source of funds mentioned by town council president Scott Oldham is the upcoming supplemental distribution of LIT (local income tax). That is a distribution that is made based on a calculation of excess amounts in the State Budget Agency’s LIT trust account for Monroe County.
To get an idea of how the supplemental distribution might work out for the town of Ellettsville this year, in May last year the supplemental distribution for all governmental units in Monroe County was $1,629,772.
In May 2023, the Ellettsville received $25,702 in supplemental certified shares. That amount did not include any supplemental distribution for the ED LIT category, but this year it should.
If the same simple percentage from 2023 (25,702/1,629,772) were applied to this year’s total of $14.83 million for the supplemental distribution, the town of Ellettsville could see around $225,000 in additional LIT revenue, beyond what was included in its 2024 budget.
Monroe County council president Trent Deckard told Oldham at Monday’s meeting that inside of a few days or maybe a week, the exact supplemental distribution numbers for each unit in Monroe County would be known.
Monroe County is chipping in $88,000 to fund the trips that Rural Transit had historically been able to pay for with federal money.
Deckard attended the town council’s meeting meeting to speak in support of the idea that town councilors should find a way to support Rural Transit’s service. President of Monroe County’s board of commissioners, Julie Thomas, also advocated at the town council meeting for continued support of Rural Transit.
Thomas talked about the idea that if funding through the end of 2024 were in place, it would free up time and energy to develop “the best solution possible for 2025 and beyond.”
Thomas said, “We want to put together a proposal for Bloomington Transit, and move forward from there.”
For Oldham, a significant point is the fact that Bloomington Transit has historically received federal funds based on the population in all the urbanized area in Monroe County, which includes the better part of Ellettsville. But that federal funding has historically never been put towards supporting bus service in Ellettsville.
It was only last year that Bloomingoton’s city council finally changed local law to allow Bloomington Transit to operate outside Bloomington city limits.
Oldham said that the town council’s efforts now, to try to find a way out of the current difficult situation, do not mean that Ellettsvill is starting a transportation service.
He put it like this: “I need people to understand that this is not the town starting a bus service.” Ellettsville has never provided transportation service, Oldham said.
“We provide water, we provide sewer, we provide police, we provide fire, we provide planning services. We have never provided trash service, we have never provided transportation service,” Oldham said.
Town councilor William Ellis reported that he had been talking to state representative Bob Heaton and Indiana’s 9th District congressional representative, Erin Houchin, about the issue. Ellis said that Heaton had pledged that next year he would bring up the situation to the state legislature. But Ellis cautioned that any type of state legislative solution could not be put in place before mid-year in 2025 and more likely not until 2026.
On the town council it was Dan Swafford who made the biggest push to continue funding the Rural Transit service. Swafford said, “I would plead with the rest of my council to at least fund this the rest of the year—until we can come up with permanent funding…” Swafford added, “So hang in there, guys, we can do this.”
