Council reconsiders LARS decision

Jeanette Pittman knows the ridership for the Lancaster Area Ride Service may be small, but told Lancaster County Council  on Jan. 24 that the service provides a world of help for local residents.
“I’m very concerned about canceling LARS,” Pittman said, minutes before council discussed reconsidering its Jan. 9 decision to not apply for a S.C. Department of Transportation grant to help extend the service. Under current conditions, and with no extra funding, the grant supporting LARS will end later this year and operations could cease after Sept. 30.
The Kershaw native said she knows first-hand the benefits of the service, as her 90-year-old father uses the local transportation system to get to medical appointments, all for a small fee.
“It’s very economical. I know it doesn’t look like much when you see 200 people use it, but they use it multiple times and they need it to get to their appointments,” Pittman said. “I hope you’ll reconsider doing something in some form so LARS vans can keep operating.”
With similar reactions from a handful of other residents and community groups – as well as concern from representatives of the J. Marion Sims Foundation that council members may not know the history behind the original grant application – council decided to revisit the issue.  
Before the discussion, both County Administrator Steve Willis and County Planning Director Chris Karres said reconsidering the vote will have no impact on submitting the SCDOT grant application because the deadline ended before the meeting.
Another look
The decision to re-examine LARS came two weeks after Karres presented several options for continuing the service. Those options included allowing funding to end, having the county foot the bill by adding $105,000 to the next county budget or submitting a grant request to SCDOT to expand the service to a full-demand public transport system.
The latter option would leave the county to cover 20 percent of the operating and vehicle costs, which could be at least $99,000 during the first year.
Council members worried about funding a service with only 200 total riders and eventually voted not to apply for the SCDOT grant.
Armed with more statistics and further information about the original grant, Sharon Novinger, executive director of Lancaster County Partners for Youth, spoke to council.
Since the service was first developed in 2004, she said it has surpassed initial projections. LARS was originally projected to have about 4,000 trips per year and 113 unduplicated riders, while it now averages more than 5,000 rides and has more than 200 unduplicated riders.
Councilman Larry Mc-Cullough, who represents the county’s Panhandle area, said the county has changed dramatically since the service was conceived in 2004.
“If we put this back on the table, we should remember, No. 1, we didn’t have high unemployment in 2004, now we do have high unemployment,” McCullough said.
Councilman Rudy Carter, who was on council when the LARS idea was first presented, said council knew back then that funding would eventually run out and the county would be asked to take responsibility of some portion.
“The public must understand one thing, that $100,000 is a lot of money, it really is. But you can’t put a dollar figure on what you’re thinking about here,” Carter said. “When people are calling me and saying ‘please don’t take it away, I’m blind and I can’t get there (doctor appointment),’ that’s hard.”
He said many of the people who use LARS have serious medical problems or have no family members to rely on, which makes the service even more necessary.
“There’s so many that are dependent on LARS that I think it’s a travesty if we don’t do something,” Carter said. “We can’t take that away.”
Sistare told Carter she doesn’t believe LARS was ever in danger of ending.
“Since we have the information, we can move forward with this,” Sistare said. “It was never an issue of no more LARS.”
Possible options
Wendy Bell, with the Catawba Regional Council of Governments, also spoke to council and said there may be options for funding the service. While council had previously decided not to apply for an SCDOT grant, she said there may be possible funding from SCDOT’s Division of Mass Transit.
“A portion of funds has always been set aside for consideration (of Lancaster County),” Bell said.
She said if council is still interested in funding for a transportation service, it can submit a letter of intent to the division.
But because those funds are highly sought after, she said council must submit a letter by July 1 saying LARS was added as a line item in the county’s budget.
Bell also said if council does express interest in this option, COG officials would be willing to pay for a transit consultant to look at the county’s needs.
After considering the new information, as well as the various offers from Bell, Sistare decided to appoint a three-member committee to examine possibilities for extending LARS. She then appointed Carter, as well as council members Charlene McGriff and Larry Honeycutt, to work alongside Karres and the county’s Council on Aging on the committee.
Council then voted unanimously to reconsider its previous vote and accept the new committee.