DANVILLE — The saga concerning CRIS Rural Mass Transit services continues, with hints of possible action taking place during the next city council meeting.
Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. and Danville Mass Transit Director Steve White, gave an update on where CRIS Rural Mass Transit stands during the Danville Public Works Committee meeting on Tuesday.
Williams made sure to notate that CRIS Healthy Aging and the transportation service are two separate entities, placing some blame on the separation as to when the problems started.
“Unfortunately, since transportation was segregated out, the transportation portion has struggled,” Williams said. “They’ve had several different directors, several different finance people, and it’s been an ongoing challenge.”
Williams said CRIS RMT was contracted out to provide paratransit services for those who cannot use traditional busing services to get to medical appointments, like dialysis treatments.
Williams added that the city was informed a few years ago of other problems brewing.
“At one point, they were behind almost one year in billing us for our paratransit services, meaning that they hadn’t taken any revenue from us,” Williams said. “It made it difficult for us to do our reporting, too, because we have to pay bills in order to properly report.”
Williams said during that time, due to population loss in Danville, the state classified the Danville Mass Transit as a rural service, not an urban service.
“The state of Illinois says there can only be one rural transportation provider in the county,” Williams said.
“Long story short, it said that the CRIS Rural Mass transit district at that time could only prove 46% of their expenditures,” Williams told the committee. “They had made excess expenditures that were not permissible by the grant program, that they could not verify all of their payroll, and that their line of credit had extended from just over just that $300,000 to over $800,000, so the state was stepping in to override the county and make us the fiscal agent for the upcoming fiscal year.”
However, following that news, Williams said two weeks ago he received news that the CRIS RMT District board, “voted suddenly and unanimously to completely dissolve their ability to suspend all transportation and to solve their organization now that put us in a world our citizens, in a world of hurt.”
The crux of it is that Williams says the organization provided necessary transportation for the vulnerable in Vermilion County. WorkSource has around 100 clients, according to Williams, and he said around 80 of them were provided transportation through CRIS services.
“These are adults with developmental disabilities,” Williams said. “They go there for life skills. They go there for group sessions. They go there for training, for recreation and for job placement. Eighty of their people are without transportation.”
Williams added they have other partners in need following the loss of services, like Community Action and Crosspoint Human Services.
However, IDOT is stepping up, Williams said he had a meeting with IDOT Director David Shafer.
“Currently, we are provided with 65% of the funding from transportation from the state, and the rest is from federal and local funds,” Williams said. “They are willing to move us up to 80% of the funding coming from the state, and then the rest would be from federal and local funds.”
Williams added that IDOT is willing to transfer the liens on the CRIS vehicles to the city so they can provide transportation.
“We’ve had a lot of meetings, we’ve had a lot of work yet to do, but we’re headed in the right direction,” Williams said.
White added that as long as they get the blessing from the council on Tuesday night, they can begin using the vehicles.
“There are two vans and five of the medium-duty buses, the little smaller buses that CRIS had,” White said. “The state actually gave us permission to go over and get those so we could start servicing them, making sure they’re up to our standards.”
White added that some of the buses are not worth saving.
“There are six vehicles over there that are beyond their useful life,” White said. “They’re just not worth fixing. The state is going to sign those over to us, and then we get the money from scrapping them.”
Schafer will be present at Tuesday’s council meeting to answer any questions.
“Any details you need about what our organization will look like, or, you know, the direction we’re going, he will be more than happy to answer those,” White said of the intentions of having the director present.
And Williams is very optimistic about the future of rural transportation services.
“They’ve [the state] assured us that that funding would all come to us,” Williams said. “So my hope and my prayer is that within the next year or so, we’ll be able to come to you with updated designs to have a new, new facility, or a very updated facility, so we can make sure we meet the needs, not only of Danville citizens, but all of Vermilion County.”