ESSEX COUNTY TRANSPORTATION SUBCOMMITTEE

Tuesday, October 11, 2011 @ 1:00 P.M.

Essex County Board of Supervisors

 

 

Present

Nancy Dougal - Transportation Coordinator, Bethany Kosmider - Supervisor Town of Crown Point, and Barb Brassard - RSVP. Dave Blades, Sue Montgomery-Corey, Bill Ferebee, Sharon Boisen, Roby politi, Randy Preston, Deb Malaney, John O’Neill, Dan Palmer, Patti Bashaw and Ellen Gordon were absent.

 

Also Present

Sean Ganter - Mental Health, Vicky Heussi - DSS, Rose Vanderhoff - DSS, Wendy Besaw - Transportation, Karen Hachigian - Transportation, and Dina Garvey - Administrative Aide, Board of Supervisors Office

 

 

KOSMIDER: I would like to open this transportation sub-committee meeting. Could we start with an introduction of your name and where you’re from? What department you’re with?

At this time introductions were done around the room.

Thank you.

Would you like to give us a little information on the transportation?

 

DOUGAL: Sure, I really was hoping for a lot more people and faces to be here, but since there isn’t I’m going to go by what I have here anyways.

In August 2005, the first transportation meeting happened in Essex County. In May of 2006 the coordinator was hired. In 2007, August the mid-day route to Ti started. September of 2007, we began forming our partnerships. In October 2008, our first call went to our dispatcher, Wendy, who was the only one at the time. In December 2008, ORDA and the County developed a partnership to work together on the Mountain Valley Shuttle and then in March 2009, we took over the Mountain Valley Shuttle and made it year around. There is still an increase of services in the wintertime. April 2009, Champlain North Route began. October 2009, Essex County develops transit plan for the Crown Point Bridge closure. April 2010, Lincoln Pond Route begins. December 2010, ride share program becomes regional with Clinton, Essex and Franklin Counties participating. September 2011, Essex County participates in Labor for your Neighbor. In October 2011, the Cascade Express began.

 

KOSMIDER: Thank you, Nancy.

 

DOUGAL: Your welcome.

I’ll go now to the bullets, if you want?

 

KOSMIDER: Go ahead, are these, is this what you’ve given me here?

 

DOUGAL: Yeah.

 

KOSMIDER: Okay.

 

DOUGAL: The editorial, we had an editorial in the Valley News a couple of weeks ago and it really wasn’t a good editorial. They were telling us our route needed changing, and that we were


catering to County, State and Federal Employees. I wasn’t really upset, because, like some of my drivers and some other people were, because I know that we don’t just carter to County, State and Federal Employees. I feel the bus routes are a living thing they change. They grow, they shrink,  we re-route. We do a lot of things, with routes and we change as to where the people’s needs are. If the needs are on the other side of town from where we’re going, we’ll go to that side of Town, it’s just a learning process of were the people’s needs are and a lot of times they don’t tell us until the bus route is actually running and I think that’s because they don’t know if it’s going to run. Until it’s actually physically in operation, they don’t count it. And being dependable is one of the most important things with a bus route. Right, Rose?

 

VANDERHOOF: Right.

 

DOUGAL: She is a committed bus rider.

 

KOSMIDER: Oh, that’s nice.

 

DOUGAL: Current topics. I actually did a resolution today, with our regular committee, to surplus the two 2000 Luminas. I was told by DPW that they won’t inspect them again, the frames are pretty well rotted out. That leaves us with two, correct, Karen?

 

HACHIGIAN: Yes.

 

DOUGAL: And we will be getting one car from OFA at the beginning of the year. It is another high mileage, well used car. We’ll just use it a little bit longer.

And the first and second quarters of this year, motor pool cars traveled 37,458 miles, 22,909 of those miles were medical transports, 14,549 were not paid for reimbursement to County employees traveling on county business for using their own vehicles. So, at least $8,000 didn’t have to get paid out in mileage.

The 5311Capital and Operating Grants were submitted in April. We’re waiting to hear on the funding. I have found out, the Countywide operating funding for 2012 is estimated at $118,200.00. I don’t have word on the Capital portion, but I know that the State did present it as we have and as far as the State’s concern we have legitimate requests. One of the major requests is bus shelters. Our routes are pretty well established and now I’d like to give people a place to get out of the weather and a place to wait for the bus.

Veteran’s Transportation Grant was submitted on September 15th, I haven’t heard on that yet, of course.

Fidelis, I am continuing to try and work with Fidelis on our Managed Care. They are our managed provider for Medicaid. At this time they don’t do public transit, they only use taxis to transport their participants. This has created several issues for us. The taxi companies would rather work with Fidelis. They pay more and they pay in both directions. We can not do that, we have State regulations that we have to follow. And I also feel that, I know that the County has just one lump sum, but somewhere that money has to be made up. Whether it’s at a State or Federal level. Fidelis is in this to make a profit. So, I’ll continue to work on this, try to get Fidelis people on the buses and try to cut our costs, somewhere. Who’s ever costs they are, whether it’s State, Federal or County.

OFA, we’re working on and we actually got a report back on increasing OFA’s reimbursement amount for Medicaid, they’ve been at .25¢ for many years. We pay the volunteers, even for Medicaid clients, the Federal rate, OFA did put in a request to have it increased to .82 ½ ¢ a mile. OFA will continue to get the .25¢ a mile, while we, transportation gets the .57 ½ ¢ to help offset our costs. We do transport some OFA people with our vehicles and our drivers and also for the scheduling of rides.

Public Health, I’m working with them on the student transportation that usually goes out to bid. We’re looking at ways that we can save federal, state and local dollars. We’re trying to use some of what we already have, whether it be a county car with a driver, a public route, bus route or even a taxi. Right now, the rates for transportation companies that we’re using are very high, along with the aide that has to drive with them. So, we’re trying to be creative and come up with some ideas, where we can transport them on public transit’s bus that’s already in the area. The only thing we’d need to pay for is the aide, because the bus is already there. Taxis could be cheaper than the fares that we’re paying right now. And I was asked to look at this, by both Linda Wolf and Linda Beers. So far I’ve been looking at some ideas, it’s just a matter of regulations on what we can and can’t do.

I’m working on a new database to compile all of our statistics. We’re getting better and we’ve got a lot more numbers to try to keep track of. So, we’re trying to compile it all in one location, without it being four pages wide trying to look at it.

Our new schedule, along with posters are being distributed, I have a lot of new schedules over there on the bench. And I have some new posters, big ones and small ones. That we can put up all around to let them know about our bus routes.

I will be making new attempts with Mountain Lakes Services in the next few months to try to coordinate some of our transportation. I have a few ideas on people that we share the responsibility for. And if I can get them, at least to open the door. Which is always been the hardest part, with transportation, maybe we can work something out to get something working together with Mountain Valley Services.

 

KOSMIDER: Mountain Valley or Mountain Lakes?

 

DOUGAL: Mountain Lakes, sorry.

 

KOSMIDER: That’s okay.

Does anyone have any questions or comments, so far? It’s a huge amount of information and I’ve..

 

GANTER: Nancy, you should find that Mountain Lakes Services Director, Marty Nephew is pretty easy to approach and to work with. So, hopefully that will go well.

 

DOUGAL: I’ve been told that and that’s encouraging, because we just hit a brick wall before. And so the new..

 

GANTER: I’ve worked with him since I’ve been here, so he was the finance guy and then he moved up. So, he’s got a lot of experience there and real nice personality to him. I think that’ll go well. I’m very optimistic about that.

 

DOUGAL: It’s good that he was finance, too. Because he may understand how, it can work. Even if it’s a small amount that it saves one of us or both of us. It’s still a savings. And those dollars add up.

 

GANTER: And as you know they have a pretty good fleet of vehicles.

 

DOUGAL: Yes, they do.

They are getting smaller, in size.

 

GANTER: Right.

 

DOUGAL: They use to be huge.

 

GANTER: That’s right.

 

DOUGAL: Yeah, but they’re feeling the pinch like all of us. Is there any other questions on anything so far?

 

BRASSARD: I don’t have a question, Nancy, but can I get you to e-mail the motor-pool stats, for my records?

 

DOUGAL: What was that?

 

BRASSARD: Can I get you to e-mail me the motor-pool stats?

 

DOUGAL: You want the motor-pool stats?

 

BRASSARD: Yes, please.

 

DOUGAL: Because you already get the RSVP stats, right?

 

BRASSARD: Right.

 

DOUGAL: Something that came out of a meeting at Mental Health, I don’t really remember the name of the committee. Do you know that?

 

GANTER: Community Services Board.

 

DOUGAL: Okay, something really great to come out of that, is the Town of Keene, Superintendent?

 

GANTER: Supervisor?

 

DOUGAL: Yup, she would like to work with us.

 

GANTER: Oh, you’re talking about Cynthia Johnston. Yeah, she is the school Superintendent. 

 

DOUGAL: Yes. She’s very interested in helping public transit, whether, we work something out, where we can get people from Keene Valley to a bus stop. I believe it was last year, she was transporting two people up to the renal care center on her BOCES bus. I talked to her quite a bit about it. She feels really good about mixing general public, elderly, whoever it is with the children, because then they get a knowledge of other people and other people’s needs and I guess it worked out really well with them transporting the two patients to Plattsburgh, so I plan to sit down with her and talk, because we have with the Cascade Route, we may be able to put people on one of her buses and get them to the park and ride location, rather than them driving a car. So, it just may work out where we can work together on something and it’s also my hope that once we have one school working with us, others will get on board. I’ve always looked at the Lake Placid buses that go way down through Wilmington. A lot of people work those schedules and I just thought it would be a great way for people to get a ride from Wilmington to Lake Placid area. They don’t want anything to do with it. But, once we get one school in, maybe we can get more to at least look at the bigger picture with us.

Participating with the Labor for your Neighbor project was probably one of the most rewarding things that I’ve ever done and the ten drivers that I had, eleven drivers I had working that day, really did have an eye-opening experience on how bad things were and also it just gave you a good feeling to be out there helping.

Champlain Bridge has not opened yet. We’re hoping that it will happen before the new year. The progress has been great, it’s really a beautiful piece of architecture and the bridge celebration has been postponed until the spring of 2012.

 

KOSMIDER: There is a celebration, Saturday and Sunday.

 

BRASSARD: Saturday afternoon.

 

KOSMIDER: In Crown Point, Saturday in Addison.

 

BRASSARD: In Addison.

 

KOSMIDER: It’s a pre, a pre-resurrection party, guess you’d call it.

 

BRASSARD: Yeah, because...

 

KOSMIDER: Do you have more information on that?

 

BRASSARD: Yes, I can e-mail it to you.

Because it was two years ago, on the 16th that the bridge closed and so they’re doing this as a fund-raiser, before the event next spring.

 

KOSMIDER: Now, do you know what the events are on the Crown Point side, so people can share that? I think that I might have a poster in my car.

 

BRASSARD: Oh, do you?

 

KOSMIDER: I think so.

 

BRASSARD: I was suppose to get some Karen, but I haven’t seen her.

 

KOSMIDER: I may have a couple in my car, I’ll go look. I know there’s a BBQ and there’s music and there’s all kinds of things. Is there a raffle drawing?

 

BRASSARD: Yes.

 

KOSMIDER: A raffle drawing and so if you have Sunday off and if it’s not raining, it would be a nice activity.

 

DOUGAL: Yeah the rutabaga festival’s over, right?

 

KOSMIDER: Where’s that?

 

DOUGAL: That’s in Keene.

 

KOSMIDER: Is that in Keene, I think that I do remember that.

 

DOUGAL: I think that was last week.

 

KOSMIDER: The rutabaga festival, okay.

 

DOUGAL: He gets a lot of people.

 

KOSMIDER: I bet.

 

DOUGAL: Clinton County will be hosting a round table on October 19th, from 9:00 to 3:00. If anyone would like to attend, you can either let me know, or Maggie Barry. We had a meeting earlier this year with DOT and Clinton, Essex and Franklin Counties and it was determined that coordination wasn’t really what Clinton County was doing so, we’re working on getting them up to speed to where we are. I mean, they have awesome public transit and everything, it’s just they’re kind of where we were a few years ago, where DSS does it stuff and OFA does it’s stuff. Everybody does their own thing, it’s not working together. It’s pretty much public transit and the rest of the world. So they’re working on becoming coordinated. DOT will be there, and we’re hoping it’s a great event and learning experience and we can carry it on. The three of us seems to be, pretty much up here on our own. Not too many other rural areas like ours, to try to bring together, so we’re going to work on it together and see what we can do. My future hope is we would, Essex County would dispatch for all three counties, we would put in a regional effort. But, that’s a long ways down the road.

RSVP volunteer drivers continue to do a fantastic job transporting our seniors to appointments. Good news again, this year we will have enough funding to carry through the end of December. Previously we had run out of money, like in September and October. We spend between $2,000 and $4,000 a month for RSVP drivers. That funding, part of it is United Way funding and part of it out of OFA.

Fleet update, we have two passenger cars, two being surplused, twelve buses, nine of them are eighteen passenger and two wheelchair, two are thirty-two passenger and two wheelchair and one, thirty-five passenger with no wheelchairs. We have one wheelchair van and one, seven passenger van.

Bus Route update. Champlain South, our longest operating route travels from Elizabethtown to Ticonderoga and back three times per day. This route’s PM trip has been losing riders, we have come up with a solution to combine the Lincoln Pond PM route and the Ticonderoga PM route. This will reduce by one bus and one driver for the evening and it will not reduce the places we go. On our way back from Ti, it’s going to be upon request to come further from Moriah, but if anybody wants to ride, they just request it, when they get on, that they still need to go to E’Town, then the driver will bring them to E’Town. But if he has no riders from Port Henry forward, then he will end his route.

 

VANDERHOOF: Are you going to use a bigger bus? Because we have at least 6 or 7 steady riders, now.

 

DOUGAL: I can, but right now we’re lucky if we have two going to Ti at night. So...

 

VANDERHOOF: Okay.

 

DOUGAL: We do have bigger buses available.

 

VANDERHOOF: It would still go back over Lincoln Pond, but continue to Ticonderoga?

 

DOUGAL: Right.

 

VANDERHOOF: And then back to Port Henry.

 

DOUGAL: Right, we have no riders, really from Westport on the late afternoon bus. So, not going to Westport, at this point is not a big deal. And I’m looking at changing it in January, so I’m going to spread the word. So anybody that thought they wanted to ride from Westport and just hadn’t they can let us know. It’s just going to continue on over Lincoln Pond. That route won’t change other than we’re extending the one nighttime run.

 

VANDERHOOF: Are you aware that they are thinking of replacing that bridge right there, where the ambulance is and I don’t know how to tell you. If your coming down from Moriah and you can either go Witherbee or Mineville. That they are going to replace that. He made a comment, about it being closed and having to go back around and I had heard that sometime ago.

 

DOUGAL: What road is that on?

 

VANDERHOOF: That’s on, what’s that road coming down right through there.

 

HEUSSI: If you’re coming off from Moriah Corners?

 

BRASSARD: Moriah Center. Witherbee Road and Plank Road.

 

VANDERHOOF: Plank Road, that’s it.

 

DOUGAL: Oh right down by Mill Brook.

 

VANDERHOOF: But, I had heard that they would keep one lane open, because of the businesses and...

 

DOUGAL: As far as I know that’s like one of the most traveled county roads in the County. There’s like 30,000 - 40,000 people that go over that. Lenny Zelkowitz did a study one time on it. Let me do some asking.

 

VANDERHOOF: I believe that they had talked about replacing it and then when we had all this last flooding, it apparently damaged it even more. And of course the other little one washed out on Titus Road, I fear that they might even replace that.

 

KOSMIDER: We’ll look into that.

 

DOUGAL: Can you get up through, I think it’s Stone Street and then.

 

VANDERHOOF: Right now you can get up to Moriah, because Port Henry and Moriah.

 

DOUGAL: But if he went across Stone Street, could he get up through?

 

BRASSARD: He’d have to go Stone to Switchback and that would take you on to Phelfisher, I believe.

 

VANDERHOOF: I believe that he’s going to be able to come over that. If they leave one lane open.

 

DOUGAL: I’ll find out from DPW and I’ll let you know, because they’re going to know if it’s getting replaced. It’s a county road and a county bridge, so they should know and maybe they can give me a date and is it going to be one lane or two lanes.

 

VANDERHOOF: That could mean coming up to Moriah, up and down and backtracking all the way back to Decker’s Flats to get up onto Mineville Road. I just can’t imagine them not keeping one lane open.

 

DOUGAL: I can’t imagine them not having one lane, but I’ll try to find out for you and for us.

Let’s see that was Champlain South.

Lincoln Pond, rider-ship remains pretty steady, we’ve had a slight increase because of the flex hours changing back.

Champlain North Route, rider-ship remains steady, again increasing with flex hours changing. Mountain Valley Shuttle, I’m looking at the feasability of extending this route to North County Community College. The Cascade Route goes over there, so far there’s really nobody, but we haven’t advertised a huge amount about the college. I just would like to make the college more accessible to our residents. A few reasons, number one if they can get to the college they may extend their education a little bit and trying to keep our residents at our college, because it costs us a lot of money to go to different college in a different county, at least a community college.

And let’s see, we’re working on the winter route, we’re going to one schedule this year, not a holiday and weekend and a regular schedule. It will be all on one, our supervising bus driver for that route will begin, on actually October 17th, and we already have the posting for seasonal employees for that bus route. So, if you know of people who are looking for a wintertime job driving bus, let us know, they have to fill out an application, because we need a few.

 

KOSMIDER: How many hours is that?

 

DOUGAL: Well it can vary, it can be 10 or it can be 4.

 

GANTER: Do you need a special license to operate one of those?

 

DOUGAL: Yes, you have to have a CDL and it has to be a B, which stands for bus and then a P, which is a passenger endorsement.

 

GANTER: Is that something that you can schedule through a  local community college, like Clinton or something, or North County?

 

DOUGAL: I got to see if we can fit it into that route to see the hours we’re hitting it. But we do actually connect with Clinton County. And they have a bus route that goes right from Keeseville to Clinton Community. So, we do actually have access to them. And Clinton County right now does, and they don’t care where you’re from, or what school you go to, as long as you can show that you’re a student, you get a $20 pass for the entire month and we’re putting something together very similar to that. But a person could travel from Elizabethtown to Clinton Community for, say 40 bucks for the entire month. That would be pretty good.

 

GANTER: A lot cheaper than a car.

 

DOUGAL: Yeah and you have to transfer, you know, in Keeseville.

 

GANTER: Right at Mac’s.

 

DOUGAL: Twice a day, but that’s pretty simple and we have not too many going to Clinton Community, but quite a few people that work in Clinton County and they’re riding the Elizabethtown bus up and catching the Clinton County from there. So, making the connections is working and it’s just getting people to know what public transit is and get use to riding.

I still get a lot of calls about our free Wednesdays, which is the Wednesday of the month and we have people that just participate in that. I’m not quite sure why, but that’s what they do.

Cascade Express, the first five days of operation we had two people traveling from Elizabethtown to North Elba and five traveling from North Elba to Elizabethtown. Our total rider-ship for the five days was 58. This route will probably change we’ve already had all kinds of requests, because of different schedules, but it takes a little bit of time to compile everybody’s requests up and see where it fits . That we’re helping the most people to get where they need. If a person has to wait, you know 15 or 20 minutes, on the side of each of their schedule, because the schedule that we have is helping 20 people get where they need to go, then we probably wouldn’t meet everyone’s needs, but we do the best we can to meet as many as we can. And this morning there were 8 riders on the Cascade Express. We’ve sold a lot of tickets and it seems to be doing well so far.

And that’s, oh I forgot one thing, 511NY. It’s coming to Essex County, I’ve been talking to Elward Hammerhand, from New York State DOT. He’s very interested in our ride share program that we have, 511NY has it. One difference is, their shows up on a map, where you can see where you’re going, who you could match with. Quite a bit more, I mean really you could go from Plattsburgh to New York City, by using the 511NY. They’re also going to put our bus schedules and our bus routes on there. Because there are no rural routes on the 511NY, it’s pretty much all Buffalo, Rochester and New York City routes that are on there. So, I’m kind of excited to get our routes on there so when people look at it, they do see that we have something. Recently, we’ve had a bunch of reports on the economic recovery group. I guess there’s five regions, or something and our region has Clinton, Essex, Franklin, St. Lawrence, Washington, Hamilton and I think there’s one more little on there, that’s, what’s between Hamilton and St. Lawrence?

 

BRASSARD: Lewis.

 

DOUGAL: Yes, I read through the report, they had all kinds of maps with transportation on them and the only transportation they had was a airport in Plattsburgh and a airport in St. Lawrence County. A bus stop in Clinton County and one also in St. Lawrence county, which were Trailways or Greyhound. There’s no public transit routes. It bothered me quite a bit, because it’s suppose to be bringing business to our area. Maggie Barry from Clinton County and I have both hopped on the boat and we’re talking to a lady about it and we were pretty much told we were the corridor between Montreal and New York. It made me feel like we’re a hallway. It’s not quite what I think this group should be doing. I mean, if they’re trying to bring jobs to our area, they should show the people where the transportation is, so that they have that information and there’s going to be a community meeting, I believe next Tuesday, at the Elizabethtown School from 6:00 to something and I’ve asked to speak at it, because I don’t like being called a corridor. So anyways I think that we have a lot of opportunities here and we could do businesses well, with employees and so on. We just got to let them know that we’re here.

 

KOSMIDER: How do we advertise transportation here in Essex County?

 

DOUGAL: I have two 30 second commercials on Fox 44 and Channel 22, which I think is WCAX.

 

GANTER: 22 is the local ABC.

 

DOUGAL: We have information on the Press Republican website, plus our full schedule gets printed once a month in the Press Republican.

 

GANTER: Yeah, I’ve seen it.

 

DOUGAL: And we have an ad every two weeks in the Valley News.

 

GANTER: Information on the bus itself?

 

DOUGAL: Yes

 

GANTER: People see it as it goes by.

 

DOUGAL: And our county website.

 

KOSMIDER: Do you pick up new riders because of the advertisement or is it just because?

 

DOUGAL: I don’t really know, I think the ride-share program benefits from the commercials. Because one of them is just on the ride-share.

 

HACHIGIAN: We get calls from people that need rides. A lot of people call that they noticed the bus and contact us.

 

DOUGAL: I think that they notice the green buses, too. Where the white ones were always labeled.

 

HACHIGIAN: It’s just the rider-ship as increased.

 

KOSMIDER: Are there any questions or anything you want to discuss?

 

HEUSSI: Nancy, on the Cascade Express, somebody told me that it’s not the ski jumps anymore, it’s at the horseshoe grounds?

 

DOUGAL: Correct.

 

HEUSSI: But, it still says on this that it’s the ski jumps.

 

DOUGAL: On the poster I think it might, we have corrected the schedule. ORDA decided that they’re busy and have a lot, sometimes they overflow to the horseshoe grounds. It just ended up, the guy in charge of the ski jumps was on vacation and we didn’t get a reply for over a month so. A lot of times when you hear nothing, assume it’s the worst, I guess, not the best.

So, but, if someone where to park there, the drivers know that there’s going to be a few, there maybe a little discrepancy so they look there, just in case. We’ve got people from Saranac Lake driving over and parking. One is parking at the regular, the paid municipal parking lot, so we’re going to try to get her down by Stewart’s, because that one’s free. But we do have quite a few people interested. The bike racks are popular. Other than flexing a little bit for schedules, and I’m almost thinking, in the wintertime, when there’s a lot of people working over at the mountain and stuff, having a second run, but I have to wait and you know.

 

HEUSSI: I just want to make sure those people have the right information.

 

DOUGAL: Yeah, but I do have the new updated schedules and I did give a couple of the big posters to the girls at reception, because they had the old ones.

 

HEUSSI: Yeah, okay that’s good.

 

DOUGAL: And they had actually asked me for new ones, awhile ago.

 

HEUSSI: They see everyone.

 

KOSMIDER: Is there anything else anybody has to say or ask?

 

GANTER: I just want to say, you know, you guys have done just a great job here, we’ve come so far with the transportation, you know in the nine years I’ve been here. To see the progress that we’ve made. So, kudos.

 

DOUGAL: Thank you. Thank you, it’s nice to hear.

 

KOSMIDER: I know. Well if there’s nothing else, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.

 

 

            As there was no further discussion, this sub-committee adjourned at 1:38 p.m.

           

 

Respectfully Submitted,

 

 

Dina Garvey, Administrative Aide

to the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors