SMART board set to discuss cuts, agency’s future at first meeting since election loss

The board of directors that oversees the North Bay’s commuter rail system is set to meet Wednesday for the first time since voters last month rejected a ballot measure that would have guaranteed sales tax funding for SMART through 2059.

The resounding defeat of Measure I was propelled by a chorus of SMART critics who have called for an overhaul in the train system’s operation, contending it serves too few people at too great a cost.

Now, Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit’s board will begin confronting changes in the system that will likely impact both ridership and cost. SMART officials say they will need to slash millions of dollars from the agency’s annual budget, affecting both their workforce and daily service, to make room for rising debt costs tied to construction of the $653 million line. Measure I’s passage would have lowered those costs by refinancing debt.

“We’ve already kind of laid out what the consequences before the election were going to be,” said Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt, a SMART board member. “That obviously now hasn’t changed, so it’s a known commodity going forward and we’re going to have to act accordingly and stay within our budget. The big thing is how and when do we go back out to voters, and what do you do in the interim?”

That interim has become an even greater unknown amid the coronavirus crisis, which has spurred a dramatic slowdown in public transit - including a downsized SMART schedule - and set in motion a precipitous drop in the sales tax revenue that makes up the bulk of the train’s operating budget.

SMART’s sharpest critics, meanwhile, are demanding major shifts in management. The Marin County-based advocacy group Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers has recommended staff cuts, a new executive leadership team and a new structure for the board of directors.

“SMART’s board has its work cut out for it,” Mimi Willard, president of the group, said by email. “New top management is likely a prerequisite for any second attempt at extending the sales tax. A new GM will want a clean slate, including CFO.”

But Novato Councilman Eric Lucan, the SMART board chairman, signaled that a shakeup in leadership, including longtime SMART General Manager Farhad Mansourian, or Erin McGrath, the agency’s chief financial officer, was unlikely.

“We have a general manager and a finance head,” Lucan said. “I have a lot of confidence in the team we have in place, and the continuity behind them. If things need to fall on anybody, it is definitely not our staff.”

Mansourian, who has led the agency since 2011, has a year left on his current contract.

Lucan stressed that he welcomed ideas for how to reconnect with residents and renew their trust the system, which is operating on 45 miles of the planned 70-mile route from Larkspur to Cloverdale. Measure I, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, received only about 54% of the vote between the two counties.

“It’s not that we lost by a percentage point or two, so it’s an even more critically important time for introspection, to listen and hear from the public, and for implementing change in order to earn support from the public that we need in the future,” Lucan said.

Those pushing for deeper change may have an ally in Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane, a 10-year SMART board member. Zane, who in March lost her own reelection bid, is calling for additional oversight of the agency, greater transparency to meet voters’ demands and an end to what she called the board’s “rubber-stamp” leadership.

“The board looks like it’s been too much of a rubber-stamp board. It has, and it’s been frustrating,” Zane said. “We need people to ask tough questions. And staff has to be more transparent, no doubt about it. You can’t ask tough questions … if you don’t have facts about what they’ve done.”

The Measure I vote came in the wake of a monthslong stand last year by SMART officials, led by Mansourian, to withhold daily ridership data, information they contended they did not have and were not required to produce. In late December, SMART reversed course and disclosed the detailed ridership figures.

Lucan acknowledged before the March 3 election that the stance had done damage to public trust in the agency.

Since the election, however, the coronavirus shutdown has proven the more immediate emergency, with shelter-in-place orders that have suddenly reshaped public transit. SMART canceled weekend service and last week cut its weekday service by half to account for a loss of more than 90% of its ridership.

Between forgone fares and slumping sales tax receipts during the shutdown, SMART projects revenue losses of $11 million, or about a quarter of its annual budget, through the summer, according to an agency spokeswoman. The recent federal stimulus package, will make up some of those losses with roughly $1.3 billion in emergency aid for Bay Area public transit. An announcement about SMART’s share of that package is expected later this week.

On Wednesday, board members are slated to meet online and begin making decisions that will affect future service and management. The process will take time and be painful, directors said, but they acknowledged it is necessary.

“We just lost by more than 10%, so obviously something needs to change,” said Santa Rosa Councilman Chris Rogers, a SMART board member. “A lot of these reforms we’ll be looking at should be geared toward an honest assessment about what transit can do and what it’s going to take to get there. ‘So was this pie in the sky?’ And then be honest about what we can deliver and when we can deliver it as soon as possible. Voters deserve that and voters expect that.”