Fresno-area college bus pass program gets new life - for now. Bitwise proposes solution

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Thousands of Fresno-area community college students will keep their ride to class - at least for the rest of the year - but questions remain about how the trustees will find the money to fund a permanent solution.

State Center Community College officials voted Tuesday to extend the district’s free bus pass program through the fall 2020 semester. The unanimous vote came after elected officials scrambled to find funding before the program ended in May, and with it, students’ ability to get to class.

The funding will come from the same place it did for the past two and a half years: money allocated for parking lot maintenance. The extension allows the district more time to come up with a permanent solution, trustees say.

Administration previously said the money was needed fix parking lots. Last month, district spokeswoman Lucy Ruiz said the district “can’t sustain” funding for the program from the parking lot fund. But Chancellor Paul Parnell on Tuesday said the district could use the funds for the bus passes. “We can use parking fees,” he said, ”but there’s a cost to doing that.”

Trustee Bobby Kahn said it was important to extend the program not just through summer, but through fall. He said when fall registration opens up in two weeks, students who know they won’t have a ride may not register at all.

“We need to give the task force time to get the work accomplished because two weeks is not gonna cut it,” he said.

Over 1 million bus rides have been taken since 2017 when the program began at Fresno City College and Clovis Community College.

Bitwise proposes a deal

In a presentation to the board, Christine Miktarian, vice chancellor of operations, gave trustees a few ideas on where the funding could come from starting in January 2021.

Miktarian says Fresno tech hub Bitwise offered to step up and foot the bill, but on certain conditions.

Bitwise Industries said it would fully fund the program if State Center could partner with the City of Fresno to implement a new mobile app that would encourage bus ridership throughout the community.

Bitwise would install and maintain hardware and software at no cost to FAX and would charge a transaction fee with each fare to generate revenue through the application, according to a letter from Bitwise to Fresno City College President Carole Goldsmith. The app would help riders find their buses and get bus information.

Trustees sounded cautiously optimistic about Bitwise’s offer. Miktarian said it may sound too good to be true, and other trustees worried it wouldn’t guarantee that students would still get their passes if the implementation of the app doesn’t work out.

“There are a lot of moving pieces out of our control on the Bitwise part,” Trustee Annalisa Perea said. “It sounds like it’s more of a Bitwise and City of Fresno type of agreement.”

Other solutions

Bitwise wasn’t the only one stepping up to find a solution.

Perea at the meeting brought up a number of ways she believes the funding could be found within the district.

“It sounds like there are a lot of funds that can be reallocated, its just a matter of we haven’t made a decision to reallocate anything yet. I personally do not want to see the students carry this burden,” she said. “I think they have enough to worry about.”

Goldsmith said she has been in talks with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to partially fund the program. But she said nothing has been set as of yet.

The Associated Student Government at Fresno City College passed a resolution to poll students on whether they would pay up to $10 a semester to keep the program running. But that would only kick in if elected leaders cannot find a fix.

The Fresno City Council also discussed jumping in to save the program, but some councilmembers said it was the responsibility of State Center and Parnell.

Trustees said the extension would allow the district time to find a permanent solution, but didn’t set a firm timetable. They said they want to put a plan in place before the spring semester next year.

Fresno City College students Matthew Woodward and Ottie Breen said they left the meeting feeling more optimistic. The two are part of the Sustainable Action Club and have used the passes to ride FAX.

“I am upset the board took their time to come to a decision to extend funding,” Woodward said, “but I’m glad that students registering in two weeks for fall 2020 will be able to attend school and take the bus.”

Finger pointing

While the district’s elected trustees extended the program and promised to find a permanent solution, how the situation reached that point became less clear Tuesday.

Parnell said that even before the announcement of the program’s ending broke on social media, officials had already been in talks with administration and the Associated Student Government to extend the funding.

“It’s been in the press and even students talking tonight, and even some of our trustees have said that the chancellor has canceled the bus pass,” Parnell said Tuesday. “And that is not true. Never happened.”

But trustees have said they were blinded sided by the decision. Trustees only learned of the program’s end after a student spoke up at a meeting earlier in the year, Board President John Leal previously told The Bee.

Trustee Eric Payne said there was a lot of “finger pointing” going on in the room as officials tried to explain how the program’s ending came as such a surprise.

“I really don’t know how we could have gotten better with our communication. Our students are really in limbo and they’re probably questioning, ‘Wow, can the adults get this right for us?’ I think that we pay a lot of folks at this table and in this room a lot of money and I just did not see the urgency in this process.”

Perea on Wednesday said she felt the same.

“Our students are not interested in excuses or finger pointing,” she said. “They’re interested in whether they’ll be able to continue their educational journey, and as a board, we were able to give them that security by voting unanimously to extend the free bus permit program.”

This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 10:15 PM.