Sixty dollar car tab fees

[sna]

I know people think this is a right wing, tea party argument against it, but I like to think of it another way: “What else could we do with the money saved if Metro was more efficient?”

Wages and benefits are 70% of Metro’s operating expenses. And, I looking at what other cities pay and what most benefit programs cost, it’s fair to say Metro’s labor/benefit cost is about 15% too high.

That 15% is about $65M per year. With that money, you could take each and every homeless person in Seattle and put them up in a $1,100 per month apartment.

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[wakeflood]

OK, I get your take.

Couple of questions. Got any examples of employee’s benefits growing over the last few decades in this country? Productivity has shot through the roof and companies are flush with cash and benefits have been getting hacked, year after year for those employed and retired in the private (and often public) sector.

“Too high”, relative to what, exactly? Other municipalities that have hacked their benefit plans over the years too?

Is it possible that the 15% you calculate is just the artifact from holding the line on benefits instead of hacking them back like everybody else has?

I believe a post further up this thread indicates some significant concessions on wages and benefits to reduce costs over time, apparently those are insufficient to your way of thinking. So be it.

And if I believe that Boeing’s state tax relief is a billion dollars too generous, I wonder how many improvements to infrastructure we could make with that…? But then again, private entity relief is de rigueur these days.

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[JanS]

an important read:

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/03/21/ballot-statement-bad-math/

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[JanS]

@Wakeflood…do not get us started on Boeing…and it’s 1000 engineers being transferred out of state. (“Take *that*, you normal people out there”) :(

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[skeeter]

Wakeflood – here are my thoughts. First of all, I voted for Prop 1. Metro isn’t perfect but I like to think of myself as a pragmatist and it does more good than bad so I support it.

But I understand where folks against it are coming from.

King County employees have a very rich benefit package. Far, far richer than what most (including me) have in the private sector. There is retiree medical. Retiree dental. A defined benefit retirement plan. Some people boil it down to this: “You are asking me, a taxpayer without retiree medical, retiree dental, and a defined benefit plan, to increase my taxes to pay for government personnel who do have retirement dental, retiree medical, and a defined benefit retirement plan.”

Those who are against prop 1 are telling Metro to first cut employee benefits to levels consistent with the private sector and then see if more tax money is still needed.

I think you’re right that it’s a race to the bottom, Wakeflood. But the folks at the bottom are looking up one rung on the ladder and trying to pull those folks down with them. If you think the divide between the 1% and 99% is wide now, wait another 20 years.

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[sna]

Wakeflood:

Regarding your “too high” question

For benefits, it’s extremely rare for an employer to cover 100% of the premium for family coverage. King County does. Employees pay $ZERO. If KC employees paid 25% of the cost (as is common elsewhere), that works out to %50m – $75M per year.

For Metro wages, most every cost comparison between KC and other metro areas (with same or higher cost of living), shows that KC pays well above average. And I just love how the rejected Metro contract states if “new funding is found” the union members get an extra 1.6% pay raise.

And then there’s the 200 pages of labor rules that dictate how each and every staffing decision is made, overtime allocated, etc.. That no doubt adds to the cost.

I’m not against prop 1 because I don’t think these problems can be solved quickly, but I do want people to put pressure on the county to make hard decisions.

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[wakeflood]

And I’m not “infrastructure at any cost” guy either, sna. I’ve worked in the private sector my whole life and get that competition with global labor and automation play big parts in what can be controlled and more often, what can’t (especially on a local level).

But I remember when big companies attracted quality labor using benefits packages that matched or exceeded those by Metro. Just because that isn’t the case, doesn’t mean we can’t work for improvement on the issues we as individuals feel need addressing WITHOUT losing sight of the bigger picture.

Which is my point. I read your last sentence as “I can’t find any other way to put pressure on this issue than voting against Prop #1”. Is that what you’re saying?

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[wakeflood]

Skeets, I agree with your thoughts. The wealthy in this country, and I mean folks who have way more than us, have successfully turned the rest of us against each other. They’ve used the, “he/she over there is winning at YOUR expense” argument to much success. And it’s both a falsehood to a large degree, AND a major distraction from their looting of the society.

They’ve used it to reduce infrastructure spending in this country to a fraction of what it needs to be and the biggest thing is they’ve gotten the very folks who would benefit from a rising tide to turn on each other so they don’t have to wear the black hats. They get to sit back, turn dials, watch the $ roll in and stoke the fires with it. We get to beat each other up over scraps while they laugh and watch like Roman Senators at the Coliseum.

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[gmabetty]

This is the longest discussion I have seen here for some time. I recently worked a petition against the “re-routing of the 128” away from High Point. I’ve found that the people making these cuts and relocations are not at all familiar with the geographical points of the High Point route they’re cutting. They do not know that this neighborhood section of the route is situated at the top of a hill. I myself and many others are not able to walk up from Delridge or California. We will lose our only supermarket. By combining it with another route they predict increased ridership. At 2:30 pm its nearly impossible to get on the 128 from Admiral through the Alaska Junction. What gets me is Metro keeps bragging about ridership is higher than this past year. With all the cuts and changes they will lose riders. I voted “yes” because of the $20 rebate for low-income riders.

Before I moved here 8 years ago from another county, we were faced with the same issues, cuts and fare increases if we voted “no”. They won their vote. We lost bus service in my area to twice a day and many other changes. Also had fare increases. How disappointing that was. I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen here. The senior & disabled fare wsn’t increased with our last changes here and I don’t mind it now but puts a hardship on many. When I came in 2006 it was $.25. When you think on it, gas wasn’t what it is now either. Same with groceries. My rent increases every year and that’s because of SS cost of living increase. Everything is increasing constantly and now they want to take our bus? They say “We aren’t taking your bus away we’re just relocating it, down to Fauntleroy.

This change will greatly effect the Quality of Life for many in High Point.

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[seaopgal]

Thanks for sharing your personal experience, gmabetty. We need to hear about the very real impact of the proposed cuts on people who rely on Metro for their most basic transportation needs.

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[JoB]

sna.. is there a ballot measure to make metro more efficient? i didn’t see it.

what i saw was one to save funding for our existing outdated metro system…

it’s not much.. but it’s all some people have

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[metrognome]

sna – I admire the amount of research you’ve done and I disagree with your conclusions for one basic reason … you’re counting beans without considering the quality of the beans or the experience of the customer who is buying the beans. I don’t mean that to sound snarky; counting beans is important. However, it does not provide a complete picture, esp. when using aggregate data collected at a national ‘one report fits all’ level. If you were to compare the price of a meal at McD’s vs the equivalent meal at Zippy’s, would you simply look at costs or would you look at quality, drive-thru vs dine in, customer satisfaction, etc.

One problem with this discussion s that there is too much data; here’s a good description of Metro’s current services that tackles some of the issues raised by sna in layperson’s terms and provides explanations for the increased costs (for example, pension costs have increased by 40% but the state legislature, not King County, sets pension requirements):

http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/reports/2014/metro-transit-finances-overview-02-03-14.pdf

Also, here’s a partial list of services Metro offers that may or may not be provided by other agencies. These all incur add’l costs and yet many customers rely on some or all of them to even be able to use public transportation:

– Metro maintains 130 park-and-ride lots used by almost 20,000 commuters daily as well as regional and local transit centers and major transfer points;

– Metro manages the largest publicly owned and operated commuter van program in the nation;

– Metro participates in the regional fare system and provides programs for large employers, universities (i.e. the UW U-Pass), etc.

– Metro operates a regional Rideshare ridematch system for carpoolers;

– Metro provides an automated regional Trip Planning service that includes multiple transit agencies and the ferry system. In addition, Metro’s Customer Information Office is available 17 hours a day during the week, 11 hours per day on weekends;

– Metro operators (i.e. drivers) and mechanics routinely place in the top five at the regional and national Roadeo competitions; a Metro operator won the national skill competition in 2011. Metro has received several safety awards and is recognized by its peers as being a top-notch public transportation provider.

Lastly, I would note that Metro routinely has a Rider/Non-rider Survey performed by an outside contractor. The results consistently show a high level of satisfaction with Metro services.

http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/reports/2012/2012-rider-survey.pdf

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