Officials Seek Funding for Transit Plans for Disabled : Transportation: The county’s largest operator will have to turn to cash-strapped cities for money to meet federal requirements.

Just a week before a federal deadline to submit plans on providing transit service for people with disabilities, some Ventura County officials are still uncertain how the service will be funded or when it will be implemented.

Public transit officials are required to submit plans to the federal government by Jan. 26 outlining their strategy for complying with provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act, a 1990 civil rights law. The law guarantees people with disabilities equal access to jobs, public facilities and public transportation.

Ventura County officials said that the greatest challenge of the law will be in providing disabled residents with the same level of transit service now available to the general public. Essentially, this means providing door-to-door bus service to residents who cannot get to a regular bus stop. The new service must keep the same operating hours and cover the same area as a city’s regular bus service, according to the law.

Under the law, transit companies have up to five years to fully comply with the law. However, operators could be asked by the Federal Transit Administration to begin implementing the first phase of their programs as early as this year.

Officials in Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Fillmore and Moorpark, which provide their own transit service, said implementing the program this year would not pose a major problem. But it would be almost impossible for the county’s largest transit operator, South Coast Area Transit, officials said. SCAT provides bus service in Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Santa Paula and Ojai.

The agency does not have the funds or the specially equipped vehicles to provide door-to-door service, said Maureen Lopez, a SCAT official. SCAT’s proposal now calls for the agency to implement the first phase of its door-to-door transit program, estimated to cost as much as $250,000 a year, in July, 1994.

Officials said about 3,400 people with disabilities will qualify for the program.

Most of the money for the new service will have to come from cities now served by the transit agency, Lopez said. But the cities have had to tighten their budgets because of the recession.

She said the cities would be forced to either dip into their reserves or divert money from other programs to pay for the new transit service.

“The only other option would be to file for a waiver” because of undue financial burden, she said. “But from what I’ve been told, the chances of waivers being granted are few and far between.”

Walter Strakosch, a federal transit official in San Francisco, said he could not comment on SCAT’s predicament because he has not seen the agency’s transit proposal.

But Strakosch said his agency does not intend to issue a “blanket of waivers.” He said even if a temporary waiver is granted, the transit company will still be required to file an annual report to show that it is making progress toward improving service to people with disabilities.

Transit operators that do not comply with all of the provisions of the law risk losing federal funds and could face prosecution by the government, federal officials have said.

Simi Valley officials said the city will probably have to purchase one or more new vans to expand door-to-door service so that it is equal to the city’s regular bus service. The city now has two minivans, which accommodate wheelchairs, used for a dial-a-ride program for the elderly and people with disabilities.

Diane Davis-Crompton, director of Community Services, said it will cost the city a substantial amount of money to expand its service, but declined to give a specific amount. She said her staff is still putting the city’s plans together and could not say when Simi Valley will implement its expanded transit program.

Officials in Camarillo, Moorpark, Fillmore and Thousand Oaks plan to either expand existing door-to-door transit service or change their current bus service by the end of the year to accommodate passengers with disabilities. They said they do not expect their expanded transit programs to put a financial strain on their cities.

Roy Myers, a Thousand Oaks transit official, said his city now subsidizes a low-cost dial-a-ride program for the elderly and people with disabilities. He said the city contracts with a local cab company to provide the service. The cab company, he said, has two specially equipped minivans and three station wagons that accommodate wheelchairs.

Myers said the city simply needs to expand the hours that the dial-a-ride service is available so that it is equal to the operating hours of the city’s regular bus service, which runs 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. every day.

Thousand Oaks spends about $300,000 a year on the subsidized taxi service. To expand the operating hours will cost it an additional $12,000 a year, Myers said.

“This will be an easy one to meet,” he said of the new transit requirements. “The hardest thing will be filling out the papers.”