Margate mulls outsourcing bus line
With its bus service getting too costly to maintain, the city is considering hiring somebody else to run its buses for less.
The city commission will discuss outsourcing the city’s 17-year-old bus service at its 7 p.m. meeting on Wednesday. The city is considering whittling the $687,000 annual expenditure by contracting with Limousines of South Florida to operate the buses.
The savings could range from about $219,000 to $271,000 a year.
“We’ve racked our brains to figure out how to save our money [and provide] the same service,” said Mark Poirier, the city’s transit coordinator. “There’s not a whole lot of way around it.”
The city has buses running four routes a day, six days a week, shuttling an average of 400 people a day. The cost is 75 cents per ride.
The stops include shopping centers, supermarkets and pharmacies, and businesses along State Road 7–”everything you could find in the city of Margate,” Poirier said. There are even a few stops outside the city, such as Coral Square Mall and a Walmart, both in Coral Springs, and Broward College’s north campus in Coconut Creek.
When asked in advance, the bus driver will also stop at homes and condos and is a “little more personal,” Poirier said. “If there’s an elderly lady at the bottom of the stairs, we’ll carry packages on.”
Mayor Joe Varsallone said the city is projecting a $2 million shortfall in its upcoming budget, so now is the time to discuss where to trim.
“When you have shortfalls in finance, if you can’t hold on to your independent services, what do you do? Do you let them die?” he said. He said he is committed to keeping the bus service running, but must explore all options. “We don’t know when recovery is going to start,” he said.
The range of outsource savings depends on whether the city chooses to pay employees $11.13 an hour with health benefits, or $12.57 without them. The former would save $219,000; the latter, $271,000.
