Acting all surprised, the Memphis City Council is lame. It’s like the Council does not have access to the Internet or a staff for research. In committee session on 9/10/24, Councilor Janeka White asked for the raw data to support MATA fixed route cuts. The raw data was published in a story by the Daily Memphian on 8/14/24, regularly presented at MATA public board meetings and archived on the MATA public meeting portal.

Additionally, Councilors dismiss data, financial and otherwise, presented to them by the public. The Taxpayer Justice Institute has an entire MATA data website published that gets at service area density, average fixed route trip costs and etc. Any willingness by Councilors to consider information produced by the Institute would catapult their subject matter knowledge on MATA.

In this way, Councilors would know that as much as MATA may say that service area density is a challenge, its not much of a challenge really when compared to peer cities. And Councilors would know that fixed route costs are unsustainable based on Memphis having the highest average fixed route cost in its Chamber selected peer group. They would also know that MATA ridership has not recovered post-COVID when compared to peer cities. But again, the City Council is lame and does not consider data sourced from authoritative publications and produced by the public.

Assuming Councilors themselves are pitifully unable to use the Internet, what do Councilor taxpayer funded paid staffs really do? Evidently not much. The research product of the Council is nil. And if they did research, MATA’s audited financials, available since the beginning of 2024, would reveal the media miss on the reporting of MATA’s “$60M debt/deficit” as most of that is related to long term employment benefits and not an annual operating deficit.

Again, the Council is lame. Had new Councilors been properly orientated, they would know that MATA had attempted to cut fixed routes last year but backed off due to public opposition. At that time, the Council was warned of MATA problems on the horizon coupled with a $20M bailout loan in November 2023.

Councilors would also know that the previous Council was subject matter clueless in overseeing MATA and waits to conduct oversight only after something implodes and taxpayers are ripped off,  to then act all surprised, like with MRPP.  New Councilors would also know, if properly oriented, that it is probable that MATA was ripped off by elitists during COVID as current financial statements were rarely presented to the MATA Board and public in general.

And finally, as far as dedicated funding, with proper orientation, new Councilors would know that the 2022 passed expiring PILOT funding is bogusly unreliable and effectively an elitist cockblock distraction to reliable funding. More reliable funding than expring PILOTs is now dedicated to the $550M downtown overspend Sports Authority, with the MLGW PILOT, car rental and hotel/motel taxes serving as primary funding sources. But the Council is lame.

Meanwhile, after being poorly run for years, MATA is doing what is best in rightsizing the organization and optimizing its network. Even after organizational realignment, MATA will need more local money. As far as the MATA audit goes, let’s hope the audit pukes out some value evaluations on some of MATA’s many vendors like MTM, AllWorld, Innovate Memphis, Transpro, RATP and maybe some we do not know about.

It would also be nice to know from the audit, the cost of fare collection for fixed routes, since not much revenue is produced overall from fixed route service, as well as the total costs on MATA’s new financial accounting system that does not efficiently operate.

As far as high-value lost trolley service, just put that on the failed Downtown Memphis Commission whose Mobility Authority has spent $100M on a downtown parking mobility center and private garages for investors, while also knowing there were 1.5M trolley riders in 2012. That trolley stat alone should punctuate what a failure the DMC is. But the Council is so lame they are entirely unaware, even while $4.2M is ripped by the DMC’s Downtown mobility authority for garage maintenance.

Do I need to say it again? The Memphis City Council is entirely lame, especially on matters of public financial oversight……

Daily Memphian

MEMPHIS AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY - Calendar (legistar.com)

Taxpayer Justice