State budget cuts impact Sidney's public transportation

SIDNEY -- Interim City Manager Josh Hanson announced Tuesday the City Public Transportation department will be cutting Saturday services in response to cuts in the state budget.

"We did have to make a decision that due to the state level budget reductions affecting our Transportation Department, we are going to be required to make the difficult decision of  closing our routes down for those Saturday services until further notice. Regular service hours will continue Monday through Friday," Hanson said.

He said services will continue 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

"Just a reminder, I know that our Transportation Director Kasey Kantor presented this to Council on June 24, but our current reimbursements or past reimbursements have been 75 percent for operating budgets; 50 percent of that came from the Federal side, 25 percent State," he said.

He said the City also receives reimbursements on the non-operating expenses as well. The 30 percent cut reduces Sidney's Transportation budget from a little more than $500,000 to about $336,000. 

"We're not the only community that's facing those cuts. It's across the entire state on there. So, instead of having to lay people off or anything like that, we just had to make the decision to cut those services on Saturday. On average, we're seeing about 20 people utilizing the transportation on Saturday, and then just this last month on average Monday through Friday we had 172 riders at that time," he said.