After months of discussion and review by an ad hoc committee, Yates County has voted to move forward with Regional Transit Service as its new public transportation provider.
At Tuesday’s County Legislature meeting, lawmakers voted 8 to 4 in favor of joining the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority. The county’s contribution will include an $18,000 annual payment and a mortgage recording tax that will indirectly support the service. Legislator Richard Wilson, who voted against the measure, expressed concern that once the county joins the Authority, it cannot withdraw from the partnership.
“I have a very hard time, as a current member of the legislature, doing something that will be a liability forevermore to every legislature that follows us,” said Wilson. “So in that regard, I cannot accept this.”
Legislator Dan Banach, who also opposed the move, argued that RTS will not work effectively in a small, rural county like Yates.
“A small county, very vast area, being used by a very minimal amount of people,” Banach said. “Granted, it’s something that it’d be nice to have, but we’ve got to act like a small county. How can we put another 0.05% on the mortgage tax on new people buying houses and farmers that are going to pay for this in the future, and it’s not a little amount of money.”
Fellow legislator Nonie Flynn, a member of the ad hoc committee, said they found there is a clear need for the types of services RTS offers.
“We met multiple times with department heads from community services, social services, veterans, public health, and our planner, and they all expressed that there is a need in our county for public transportation,” added Flynn. “So we looked at our two alternatives. We had multiple discussions about the existing shortcomings with YTS and why a lot of those problems have not been solved. We also looked at the offerings with RTS and the track with the counties that are just north of us, and not just large counties like Monroe, but also Seneca County, which is more rural. And we did a cost comparison between what it would cost the county to go with YTS and what it would cost us to go with RTS. And that’s why it was a unanimous decision from the ad hoc committee to go with the RTS.”
The county’s current contract with Yates Transportation Services (YTS) is set to expire at the end of the year. Allen Connelly, CEO of Mozaic, which operates YTS, told the county’s Finance Committee that the organization may not continue providing public transportation between the contract’s expiration and the planned launch of RTS service in 2027.
