C-Tran is going to take a look at expanding its service area, though not the way the county council had intended.
After a multiagency conference on C-Tran’s boundaries flopped last month, the transit board on Tuesday night voted to wrap up boundary discussions into existing long-term planning talks.
“The (conference) made a decision not to change C-Tran’s boundaries,” C-Tran CEO Jeff Hamm said. “What I heard the (conference) do was send back the notion of expanding boundaries in the context of C-Tran and its future.”
That way forward is different from a separate board, such as the one called for by the Clark County council, or a work group, favored by county Councilor Jeanne Stewart.
“We could be thinking forward to the future, and now it’s like the door is being slammed on that again,” she said. “I’m feeling just a little bit hornswoggled.”
The vote was 6-2 to have C-Tran staff bring a work plan back to the board in December. Next year’s board, possibly with several new faces, would take up the discussions in full.
“We could hold a working group that just talked about boundaries, but that’s not going to be helpful for C-Tran, because there are so many other competing demands and visions within our existing service area,” Hamm said.
Stewart and county Councilor David Madore voted against the plan.
“County representatives are very interested in the citizens who are being bypassed,” Madore said, adding that a public hearing should have been allowed by the conference before it was cut short.
La Center Mayor Jim Irish said giving C-Tran the lead makes sense, given the agency’s expertise.
“Having a public hearing on something you have no answers to doesn’t make much sense,” he said.
Only a conference called by the county or by two cities can change the agency’s borders, or at least put such a change on a ballot. Such a conference could be the result of boundary talks next year.
Madore called the existing boundaries “islands of exclusion and inclusion.”
Hamm said he finds the boundaries are “legally drawn.”
Woodland, which has expressed an interest in being served by C-Tran, would have a seat at the boundary discussions.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, C-Tran board members voted to approve new software and approved a Washington State Department of Transportation agreement for C-Tran’s Bus Rapid Transit project, also known as The Vine.
Those votes should keep construction on pace for the Fourth Plain Boulevard project.
