A Twin Transit bus stops at the Train Depot in Centralia.
A woman who played a key role in the formation of Twin Transit more than 40 years ago now feels deceived by the agency after learning of misinformation transmitted during the months preceding a ballot measure to expand the agency’s reach countywide.
Jean Fairgrieve is one of three Lewis County residents who participated in radio advertisements coordinated by Connect Lewis County — a political action committee formed to run a campaign in favor of the measure — and the Transportation Choices Coalition, a nonprofit based out of Seattle that advocates for public transit options across Washington.
Fairgrieve, who lives in Chehalis, collected data and surveyed residents to help show the need for a local transportation service in the mid-1970s. She says she was asked by someone at the TCC to talk up the recent measure in order to save Lewis Mountain Highway Transit, the nonprofit East Lewis County service that proponents of the measure had said would fold if not absorbed by Twin Transit’s countywide expansion efforts.
Recent stories in The Chronicle have shown that line to be inaccurate due to language in state legislation that blocks changes to grant funding that would have threatened LMHT.
“I feel as if when I was doing the ads promoting this election, that I was lying to people,” Fairgrieve said. “I was still telling people that if this didn’t pass, Lewis Mountain Highway Transit was going to go down the tube, and that’s because nobody ever told me it was not. I was led to believe it would.”
Helen Sutterlict, who leads the senior center in Packwood, told The Chronicle after the voters rejected the expansion measure that the result was “a big disappointment” for seniors who ride the buses to shop or go to appointments in the Twin Cities.
Asked for her thoughts Wednesday afternoon, she said only that she is “just disappointed all the way around.”
Packwood was one of three precincts in Lewis County that collectively voted in favor of the expansion initiative. Carol Mathis, who attends the senior center there, voted against the measure because she didn’t like the way Twin Transit General Manager Derrick Wojcik-Damers and Lewis County Commissioner Bobby Jackson addressed the situation during an informational meeting.
Jackson is also on the Twin Transit Advisory Board.
“They said the future of Lewis Mountain was unsure,” Mathis said. “They said it might go away. I think the way they framed it was that the grant it was running on would be ending soon. I didn’t think it was going anywhere, and I tried telling people that. I think most everyone else thought it was a good idea.”
Winlock city council member Jodi Curtis and Onalaska teacher Lori Sanderson voiced the other two radio ads, according to Connect Lewis County campaign manager Justin Leighton.
Curtis said she hadn’t been able to keep up with news about Twin Transit due to ongoing drama within her own city government, but that she wasn’t thrilled with how the campaign was run. She also volunteers at the Olequa Senior Center in Winlock.
“The first thing I would have said was if you shop in Chehalis or Centralia, you already pay the taxes that fund (Twin Transit),” Curtis said. “Your taxes at home won’t go up. … the script I read said to pass (the measure) to help make things accessible for everybody. Kids could get to jobs and seniors could get to doctor’s appointments.”
Fairgrieve said she plans to be at the special meeting called by Twin Transit scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 13 at Chehalis City Hall. Representatives from Twin Transit, Lewis Mountain Highway Transit and local government officials will be there to discuss the ballot initiative and the status of a proposed transit center in downtown Centralia.
She hopes many other senior citizens come to hear the information presented and ask questions of transit leaders.
“I would like to know just exactly who it was that withheld information,” Fairgrieves said. “Whether it was deliberate and the truth of the whole thing. If Twin Transit and (LMHT) knew about it, why didn’t they tell us? If they didn’t know, they were falling down on the job.”
