The BART Board of Directors voted Thursday to forge ahead with an incentivized retirement program intended to help mend the agency’s ailing financial outlook due to the coronavirus pandemic.
By an 8-1 vote, the board elected to offer up to 24 weeks of base pay to full-time employees who are or will be eligible for retirement by March 21, 2021.
By that date, some 1,650 employees will meet the criteria for retirement eligibility, which include being at least 50 years old and being a BART employee for at least five years, according to agency officials.
Employees who take advantage of the incentivized retirement offer would receive four weeks of base pay plus one week of pay per full year they’ve worked for BART, capped at 20 years.
Eligible employees will have four weeks from Nov. 23 to Dec. 18 to express interest in the program, as well as a 45-day window to submit a signed retirement agreement with the agency.
BART officials have determined that roughly 300 employees are most likely to retire at a total cost of $15 million to the agency.
“I think that there are tools that we have in our tool belt,” Board Director Mark Foley said. “Let’s use them now and do what we can to get through this fiscal year.”
While that payout would be a net cost of $5 million more than BART has allocated for salary and benefits in the current budget, it would ultimately save the agency roughly $45 million in salary and benefits during fiscal year 2022, which would start July 1, 2021.
Agency officials argued incentivizing retirement for the agency’s longest-tenured employees would help BART avoid future layoffs as ridership remains depleted due to the pandemic, gutting the agency’s gate fare revenue.
BART budget officials have meticulously tried to avoid layoffs, putting off staff expansions and using federal funding to make up for the lost ridership revenue.
Board Director Debora Allen, the lone vote against the incentivized retirement program, argued that a more targeted strategy would prevent the retirement program from blowing holes in the staffs of BART’s various departments.
Allen also said the savings generated by the program would only come to fruition if the retired positions remained unfilled, a suggestion the agency’s budget officials agreed with.
“There’s got to be a better way to do this,” she said, adding “this approach puts us in a position to have a lot of people moving around and a lot more uncertainty than we need right now.”
Should the pandemic continue deep into 2021 and keep ridership at a fraction of BART’s normal levels, BART budget director Christopher Simi said the agency’s budget staff has prepared scenarios in which deep cuts to
service may be necessary, a possibility multiple board directors balked at.
“We will not be able to cut our way out of our deficit,” Board Director Janice Li said, “even in the most aggressive scenario of layoffs.”
According to Pamela Herhold, BART’s assistant general manager for performance and budget, the agency brought in more revenue than expected during the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, allowing BART to put $12 million in its reserves with a projected $33 million budget deficit looming at the end of the fiscal year.
“I’m not going to count on that every single quarter, but certainly right now, with what we can control, we’re headed in the right direction.”
13 comments
Allen is the only director with a bit of sense. Layoffs and banning overtime should have already happened. Like the schools this is what happens when the unions run the show.
How did schools get in here? There really are idiots everywhere. Teachers are the hardest working (OT, weekends, holidays without extra pay), for some of the lowest wages per hours worked. How does that compare with the high pay, mega OT of BART?
Those employees had no sympathy for all the people they inconvenienced during their strikes. They should be laid-off without and benefits. What goes around come around!
Another raise?
Wow so ty Bart for laying the ground work of ridding the community of Bart
And no
ridership is not down because of Covid but keep telling yourself that
You provide a service of free riding and a full restroom train and injection sites in elevator for druggies and bums
For your patrons you charge them to park you cuz the them to ride and bike up the cars to pay for the fare jumpers that you don’t hinder or prosecute
Then you strike for more money from all tax payers to give bloated bonuses and pay pensions and paid the wallets of the board
We the people are fed up that is why ridership is low
Your practices of beating the tax payer and public
and forcing us to ride in filth and urine
Forced to take abuse from the druggies and bums
Refusing to protect the riders
All of this and then another strike
See the pattern
this is not a feasible or clean or fair or cost efficient
You have run it into the ground
And are blaming us for your financial woes
when we refuse ride due to your bad management and socialist agenda toward paying riders
You chose your path of apologizing to people who break the laws while on Bart property
And berate the police
And are politically motivated
Choosing socialist communist policy over law and order
Your board has one goal pay themselves with bonuses
As they rule over the public system
Public system not the boards system
The board did not pay to build the system or pay for the trains
Yet rule over it like a tyrant not upholding laws and choose which ones they want to use and ignoring the others
Your undoing is on you not riders
You chose to step on the riders as you stuffed your pockets with our cash
You reap what you sow
Yet another entity that believes it is above the law and will of the people
How many times do you think BART has been on strike in the last 20 years? In the last 40? Your comment reads as if you think BART is on strike multiple times a year. Yes it’s an inconvenience, but that’s the point, withholding labor to force a settlement.
Golden parachutes for BART management, and for citizens, Golden, well best not go there………
Nobody from my family has chose bart for over 2 decades and will never ride on it again. I suspect we are not the only people that feel this way.
Havent rode BART for over 10 years, and dont plan to anytime soon. Id rather just drive and park than be hassled by smelly homeless.
“Budget woes…..”
Here are 16 pages of Bart salaries. No retirement benefits listed either:
https://bit.ly/3kPZZvV
And how do TAXPAYERS feel about all the free money you’re offering, BARF?
Haven’t rode BART in 15 Years. My Wife and I used to take it to San Francisco on a regular basis but the last several times it was so unpleasant we gave up. Homeless and their belongings taking up seat space (while security did nothing,) beggars, drug use, filthy trains and the list goes on. We opted for the Ferry System which, while more expensive, is a much better experience.
They need to have mass layoffs or salary cuts if the union would agree to adjust their expenses to the revenue being generated. BART riders will not return to high ridership anywhere near what it was for AT LEAST another year…cut back like everyone else is forced to do. Don’t rely on Congress to give you a bailout.
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