Bethel’s tribe, ONC announced Monday that they will no longer provide funding for the city’s transit system. The announcement came at a joint meeting of the tribe and the city council at ONC’s offices. Gloria Simeon, President of the ONC Council, says uncertainty of federal funding is a big reason they’re pulling the money.
“The sequestration and what’s happening on the national level leaves us in a quandary because we don’t know what the funding is going to be in the next few years,” Simeon said.
“We have a new administration coming so we need to kind of close in our funding until we know what’s happening and being basically two years paid in advance in our agreement with the city, we cannot advance any more money in in-kind contributions.”
The city has been managing the transit system with contributions from ONC and matching state and federal grants since 2008. Simeon says ONC has contributed about three quarters of a million dollars to date and the council voted unanimously at their regular meeting last week to stop funding it. She says ONC needs to devote more resources to their low-income housing project.
The city council in their Tuesday regular meeting showed strong, but cautious interest in stepping in to fund the system. They would have to commit nearly $100,000 from their 2016 budget, which won’t be done until June.
John Sargent who manages the city’s grants said Monday ONC cut comes as the city is poised to secure significant transit funding.
“We have four buses right now,” he said. “We just got a brand new bus for $63,000 on last year’s grant and we have a bus in the current budget for next year. That would be another $63,000 bus, which we could get delivered and we were hoping to apply for a third bus. So within two years we would have had three new buses.”
Shannon Sumner says her decision to move to Bethel from Seattle to work for the Kuskokwim Campus of UAF was partially due to the city’s transit system. She says she rides the bus to work every day and her budget will feel a pinch if it goes away.
“I buy a bus pass. It pretty much costs me $3 a day to get to and from work,” Sumner said. “If I take a cab it’s going to cost me $12 a day to get to and from work, and that is a big huge budget difference.”
Bethel will have to find another source of funding quickly as a grant requiring matching funds is due in December. If they don’t, Bethel’s bus service could end June 30th.
Daysha Eaton is a contributor with the Alaska Public Radio Network.
Daysha Eaton holds a B.A. from Evergreen State College, and a M.A. from the University of Southern California. Daysha got her start in radio at Seattle public radio stations, KPLU and KUOW. Before coming to KBBI, she was the News Director at KYUK in Bethel. She has also worked as the Southcentral Reporter for KSKA in Anchorage.
Daysha's work has appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", PRI's "The World" and "National Native News". She's happy to take assignments, and to get news tips, which are best sent via email.
Daysha became a journalist because she believes in the power of storytelling. Stories connect us and they help us make sense of our world. They shed light on injustice and they comfort us in troubled times. She got into public broadcasting because it seems to fulfill the intention of the 4th Estate and to most effectively apply the freedom of the press granted to us through the Constitution. She feels that public radio has a special way of moving people emotionally through sound, taking them to remote places, introducing them to people they would not otherwise meet and compelling them to think about issues they might ordinarily overlook.
