ypsi~dixit

Now I understand why the AATA Board was so relunctant to institute a fare increase last Spring.

I think of G. Cook as a man of good will, but...$135,000 a year?! Lord have mercy.

What about that trip to Madrid?

It does seem a tad extreme. Ann Arbor is a burg of 110,000, for Heaven's sake. A town, not a city. Anyone running a small bus system in a small town doesn't need to belong to a jillion transportation agencies and go off to a million conferences.

I like Mr. Cook. He's been kind to me. I even think he took these trips in good will, in an effort to improve the AATA. But it does seem a tad bit much.

From what I’ve seen in some board meetings, Annis and some other board members have a tendency to disregard industry-accepted measures and methods of operation in lieu of their own wishes for how they think things should operate. This article may reflect that, as it doesn’t reveal where their non-travel related research data came from. I don’t know where the comparisons for drivers’ wages came from, but they use Battle Creek and Grand Rapids as peer cities. Just because they’re geographically close doesn’t make them peers. Systems like Boulder, CO are typically used as peers for the AATA. I’d like to see some BBC-style research done by the AA News before decisions are made about what is appropriate for an agency to do and what isn’t. How many industry associations do other peer agencies typically belong to? What are the benefits packages for peer agencies like? What are CEOs in other agencies paid? This isn’t tough info. to come by…it just takes time, which neither Annis or the AA News apparently want to spend before making their claims. Dig a little deeper…this situation may not be quite what it appears (or maybe it is).

I think the comments from Cook made a lot of sense. Annis' objection to being a well known transportation agency is not very well thought out. Ann Arbor is probably the perfect size for testing new technologies, so being well known helps with that. I think the question is how much benefit has been received by being well known. I would imagine the cost of the two diesel hybrids they received would be pretty close to $50,000. I know the base model DDC series 60 is around $16,000, so I would imagine a new hybrid with any options on it would be a bit more. I can’t even guess what the GPS tracking system would cost, but I can imagine that saving 30 to 40 percent is pretty significant. Maybe he doesn’t need to belong to all the different comities, but I think it is a good idea to have a noticeable presence. When you are known in an industry you are involved when political decisions are made that affect you. Being a test bed means that you can have a state of the art bus system without having to pay state of the art dollars for it. With things like GPS tracking, you are much more likely to be able to make the system run on time with real time data to work with.




Having worked in a lot of large corporations where I have to deal with managerial politics, this article sounds like a new committee member wanting to shake things up and start a witch hunt. This is definitely not a very productive way to handle an agency. My gut feeling is that there is another agenda on his mind, and Cook is just the scapegoat.

While this certainly seems, to me, like questionable use of funds, I would guess that it's fairly typical in Ann Arbor. No, they aren't a very large city, but there's enough concentrated wealth there, thus they tend to spend like one.

What I don't understand, however, is why you think this denotes a "Kiss of Death" for the county millage. I doubt most voters will see that article, or care much about it if they did, and I don't see how it will have any influence on such matters.

I whole-heartedly agree with Jim. The whole article seemed very fishy to me. Perhaps travel budgets should be cut back, but it seems pretty clear to me that AATA, and in turn the people of this area are benefiting from Cook being involved in industry groups.