Clovis eliminates bus fares due to coronavirus, accepts FEMA firefighter grant
The council unanimously voted Monday night to eliminate transit fees for bus riders. The council also accepted a $3.9 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that is expected to bring nine more firefighters to the Clovis department.
The two votes signaled a boost to two systems that have been challenged by the coronavirus pandemic and fiscal budget concerns.
The public transit system has seen historic low ridership in the past few months during the pandemic. The fire department has been working to bring in new firefighter jobs to staff a future fire station in the city’s growing southeast community.
Free bus rides in Clovis
Amy Hance, Clovis’ general services manager, told the council that doing away with bus fares could help increase ridership from those who can’t afford to get around other ways. She also said it could help lower pollution levels by decreasing vehicle traffic.
The city in April eliminated bus fares temporarily to reduce contact between drivers and riders in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s one of several measures in place to protect from the illness aboard buses.
Although ridership is at a historic low since the pandemic’s local outbreak, Hance, in her report to the council, said the transit system is confident that allowing free bus rides increases ridership. She said last fall the system implemented a grant to provide zero-fare rides, and ridership increased by as much as 37% between August and October.
Passengers under the age of 6 and over 65 and those with disabilities rode the bus for free already. Most passengers paid $1.25 for the Stageline service and $2.75 for the Round-Up service.
Hance said the revenue from bus ridership was also not meeting expectations, so doing away with it made sense. Currently, the city’s transit system uses Measure C funds to supplement bus revenue. A larger amount of the measure funds will cover the future costs with the eliminated fares.
Clovis to add 9 firefighters through FEMA grant
The fiscal challenges faced by cities due to the pandemic led FEMA to issue a hardship waiver for Clovis’ application for firefighter grant funding. That means FEMA initially would require the city to match the grant funds, but the agency then decided it will fund 100% of the firefighter contracts for the three years, then the city will cover the positions.
Clovis had already planned its budget around more firefighters since it was nearing the opening of its sixth fire station in the southeast area. But it now gets three years of reimbursement from FEMA.
Clovis Fire Chief John Binaski said the grant comes at a good time, especially as the city faces challenges related to one of its older fire stations. A condition of the grant was that the fire department would not drop below 61 operational personnel for two years following the grant’s implementation; Binaski said that should be an easy goal to meet.
In a staff report to the council, the fire chief showed that the number of homes in the Loma Vista neighborhood grew from 2,153 in 2015 to 7,474 in 2019. Calls for services increased as well. One of the aims for the fire department is also to reduce response times to the newer neighborhoods.
The firefighters will be hired in March of 2021 and be put to work by June. Since the sixth fire station will not be built until 2022, the firefighters will be housed in two other fire stations in the meantime, according to Binaski.
This story was originally published October 6, 2020 at 8:26 AM.
