Countywide : OCTD Assumes Part of Fare Subsidy for Seniors

The Orange County Transit District board voted Monday to accept only $300,000 to subsidize bus fares for the elderly, returning $75,000 in federal funds to the county to help preserve senior citizens’ day-care centers in Buena Park, Brea and Orange.

The unanimous decision--a compromise settlement to what has been a highly charged debate--leaves the district’s free and reduced-fare policy for seniors intact through June of 1987. However, the district must pluck $600,000 away from other transit programs to do so.

The subsidy shortfall is one of the biggest unanswered questions in the $100.35-million preliminary budget presented to the transit district Monday. It is up 7.6% from last year. Of even greater concern is a threatened cutback in federal operating funds that could dramatically reduce the $10.2 million in federal assistance that OCTD has budgeted for next year--and shrink the district’s options for providing low-cost rides to seniors.

For the past 12 years, the county has allocated about $900,000 a year in federal revenue-sharing funds for senior bus fares, allowing the elderly to ride free for most of the day and to pay only 35 cents during rush hours. But the anticipated end of the revenue-sharing program prompted the Board of Supervisors last week to cut off the subsidy, offering only the $375,000 left from last year’s allocation for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Even that offer was tendered reluctantly. The supervisors asked the transit district board to consider not taking the money, pointing to a number of other programs for the elderly, including the day-care centers in Buena Park, Brea and Orange, which face cutbacks because of other federal funding cuts.

Under the compromise proposed Monday by Supervisor Ralph B. Clark, OCTD chairman, the district will accept only $300,000, returning the rest of the money to the county to restore funding for the day-care centers.

The $300,000 will be enough to continue the bus fare subsidy only through November, and the transit district will have to dip into other accounts for the remaining $600,000 needed to continue the subsidy through the rest of the fiscal year, General Manager James Reichert told the board.