A bus stops at the Centralia Train Depot.
Twin Transit officials have consistently said for the past week that they had no knowledge Lewis Mountain Highway Transit could continue operating past June 30 of 2019 without being absorbed by an expanded Lewis Public Transit Benefit Area.
Lewis County Commissioner and Twin Transit Advisory Board member Bobby Jackson said Monday that he had no knowledge a 10 percent cap placed by the state legislature in the spring of 2017 on the local matching funds required for state transportation grants negated a perceived threat to the future of LMHT.
“I can tell you that neither the county commissioners, or the (advisory) board, or management of Twin Transit ever, at any time, received communications from Lewis Mountain Highway Transit that they intended to stay in business beyond June of 2019,” Jackson said Monday at the conclusion of Board of County Commissioners meeting.
However, both Twin Transit and the BOCC knew LMHT was applying for funding past 2019.
A document distributed in July of 2018 by Doug Hayden, Executive Director of LMHT, and obtained by The Chronicle, asks for letters of support as part of the nonprofit agency’s grant applications for the 2019 through 2023 funding cycles. The Washington State Department of Transportation grants have largely funded LMHT for decades. Hayden says he hand-delivered copies to Lewis County and Twin Transit.
“Regardless of outcome (sic) of November’s county-wide transit vote, your letter of support for continuation of this service will provide/show local support for stabilized transit service of eastern Lewis County through June 30, 2023,” concludes the “Overview” section of Hayden’s request letter.
All three Lewis County Commissioners signed a letter of support dated Aug. 28. Twin Transit General Manager Derrick Wojcik-Damers signed one dated Aug. 14. Both letters state they support the nonprofit’s efforts to obtain continued funding and were included with the application upon its submission to the state.
Jackson left the monthly mayor’s meeting Friday before a Chronicle reporter could ask him about the letter. The reporter reached Jackson on his cell phone, but the call disconnected after the reporter introduced himself. Jackson did not respond to a subsequent voicemail.
Commissioner Edna Fund said she didn’t recall the 10 percent cap coming up in discussion before the commissioners signed the letter and that she would expect Jackson to have kept the board informed of such developments.
Twin Transit Advisory Board chair Chad Taylor did not attend the Aug. 21 transit board meeting and says he was not informed that Wojcik-Damers had submitted a letter of support on behalf of Twin Transit. Meeting minutes posted on the Twin Transit website do not mention the letter.
Wojcik-Damers did not return a request for comment by press time.
“There are a lot of things a general manager can do without permission of his board,” said Taylor, who is also a Chehalis city councilor. “But he really should be consulting his board on things like this. If you’re sending a letter of support for a grant application to a company you are telling us is going out of business, there has to be a reason for it.”
Hayden has applied for about $1.3 million in grant funding for the 2019-2021 and 2021-2023 bienniums combined for LMHT. WSDOT is allowing agencies that receive funds for sustained operations to apply for multiple rounds of funding at once for the first time.
The Chronicle obtained a ranked list of 2019-2021 and 2021-2023 consolidated grant applications from member agencies of the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Planning Organization set for adoption of the organization on Wednesday. Regional organizations submit recommendations to WSDOT as part of the application process.
Lewis County transportation planner Michael Kroll sat on the committee that reviewed all the applications and determined the preliminary rankings for consideration by the SWRTPO. Per the list, LMHT ranked third out of 17 applications. Twin Transit’s sustaining operations grant application came in seventh. Both received A-grades from the committee.
“Typically, A’s tend to do pretty well,” said Don Chartock, Grants Manager for the public transportation division of WSDOT. “Just based on historical performance, A’s usually get funded.”
The packet of instructions distributed by WSDOT to consolidated grant applicants states that new submissions categorized as capital, expansion of service or planning projects “require a minimum of 5 percent local share” and that sustaining operations or mobility management projects “require a minimum of 10 percent local share.”
Chartock explained that after the state legislature made it so the agency could not require nonprofits to match more than 10 percent of their grants, WSDOT chose to apply that equally throughout the consolidated grants program.
Nonprofit agencies such as LMHT were put in a bind when WSDOT announced plans in early 2017 that it planned to require an additional 5 percent of matching funds each year for recurring grants, beginning with the 2019-2021 biennium, up to 50 percent. Hayden told The Chronicle that had the legislature not stepped in, he could have managed to hold LMHT together through June 30, 2021, but that a required 20 percent match would have been too much.
News of the proposed match increases was what prompted Hayden to go to a Twin Transit board meeting in Feb. 2017 and emotionally ask them to help continue the only bus service in East Lewis County.
“Twin Transit didn’t take this on just because it wanted to, it was asked,” said John Elmore, a former Centralia city councilor who served on the advisory board through 2017. “We felt very strongly that if we were going to go down that road, the only way it would be successful is if the public supported it.”
LMHT paid 10 percent in matching funds for its 2017-19 WSDOT grant funds after paying 11 percent in 2015-17. Wojcik-Damers said earlier this week that if Hayden had come forward and said certain things had changed, Twin Transit would have approached the expansion differently.
“The instructions are pretty clear about what the match requirements are,” Chartock said.
Twin Transit is scheduled to hold a special meeting at 9:30 a.m. Thursday in Chehalis City Hall to discuss the failed ballot initiative and its plans to build a transit center in downtown Centralia. Local government officials are expected to attend and the meeting is open to the public.
