MASCOT strives to maintain limited service

WASILLA — Two weeks after Matanuska-Susitna Community Transit laid off half its workforce, the immediate future of the bus service looks stable, but perhaps with a tinge of uncertainty.

At Mat-Su Borough’s Transportation Advisory Board meeting last week, MASCOT Executive Director Lou Friend said despite the recent reductions in staff, the bus service is doing everything it can to maintain service.

While service to Houston has been cut, and Palmer-Wasilla and Anchorage routes have been limited, MASCOT is putting together a “needs notebook” for riders with special considerations, Friend said. He also said the office is setting up a hotline for people to call to get answers about routes and times.

“By making the cuts, we know we can continue service until at least June 30, 2010,” Friend said. “We will know then what money we have for the next fiscal year.”

This is little comfort to Doug Mahoney, who is one of the hundreds of Valley residents who depend on MASCOT daily. Testifying before the TAB meeting, Mahoney said he missed a recent doctor’s appointment because the mid-morning route to Anchorage was cut without warning.

“You know, I have anger issues. I can’t leave my house to get to the 5:30 a.m. bus,” Mahoney said. “What am I supposed to do? Should I not see my psychiatrist? My knee surgeon?”

Friend asked Mahoney to send him an e-mail about his situation, which Mahoney did. As of Friday, there was no response. Mahoney said he has little hope of getting one. The service is for people like him, but he said he is continually ignored. Now, Mahnoney is faced with rescheduling his appointments without knowing how he’s going to get there.

“(Friend) should have been man enough to give people a warning,” Mahoney said.

According to MASCOT Board of Directors President Charles Parker, there was no time to give notice to passengers or the drivers who were laid off.

MASCOT’s fiscal year begins July 1, Parker said. The preliminary budget is based on the amount of money — largely from grants — the service operated on the previous year. It is not until mid- to late August that the board knows the actual figure for the revenue coming in.

The operational grants MASCOT receives from the federal government can only be used to match monies from other sources, Parker said. Some of the funding the board was relying on to access the matching funds fell through this year.

Archie Giddings, the board’s treasurer, said MASCOT received a generous grant from the Mat-Su Health Foundation last year.

“We were hoping we could get money from them every year,” Giddings said. “But that’s something they don’t do. They don’t fund programs every year. That’s something we didn’t understand.”

Once the funding picture for this fiscal year took shape, it was clear cuts had to be made, Parker said.

“We didn’t have the hard numbers until the week before the September board meeting,” he said.

At that meeting, the board passed a budget that required $400,000 in operational cuts. Two days later, six drivers, two mechanics and one office worker were laid off. Eight of the nine were union members.

Both Parker and Friend claim this played no part in the decision of whom to fire, as they say they did not know which employees were organized and which were not.

To be sure, the executive director of the Teamsters Local 959, Rick Traini, said his group is investigating the layoffs. MASCOT voluntarily recognized the union and had been professional in the past, Traini said, but “the manner of the layoffs concerns us.”

Traini said they are in the information stage, looking into who was laid off and what reason was given, and MASCOT is cooperating at this time.

However, Traini said, “We’re going to take some action … if we feel there is a pattern or a deliberate attempt to punish the organized employees.”

Traini could give no timetable for when the investigation will be finished.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.