New transportation director shares vision for public transit in Clatsop County

The Sunset Empire Transportation District has provided public transportation in Clatsop County for more than 30 years.

In 2023, the district had to temporarily stop service and lay off workers after it ran out of money due to financial mismanagement. The district has since gone through several leadership changes — the most recent executive director, Craig Johnston, stepped down late last year for personal reasons.

David Carr recently took over as executive director of the district. He joins us to share his vision for public transit in Clatsop County amid state and federal funding challenges.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The Sunset Empire Transportation District in Clatsop County has a new leader. Two years ago, as you might remember, the district had to temporarily stop service and lay off workers after it ran out of money due to financial mismanagement. The task since then has largely been to build back what was lost. That remains the goal of the new executive director, David Carr, but he does have his work cut out for him, amid ongoing state and federal funding challenges. He joins us now. Congratulations and welcome to the show.

David Carr: Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you so much.

Miller: How much has service recovered since that collapse in 2023?

Carr: Well, we’ve recovered quite a bit of service. We have the four routes: Astoria to Seaside, the Astoria route, Warrenton, and then the Cannon Beach-Seaside route. And then on the weekends, we’re able to provide the Pacific Connector, which services the area between Astoria to Cannon Beach from about 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Miller: As part of the kind of autopsy after that collapse two years ago, auditors found that there was not enough board oversight of finances. How would you describe the relationship now, between the staff of your district and the oversight of it?

Carr: Well, I think the oversight is much better. I didn’t know what it was before, but I can tell you that we do regular reporting, we have regular reporting to ODOT. We have a loan that we received to bolster our financial condition and part of that loan requires us to do a lot of extensive financial reporting. So we’re really under a microscope here in terms of our spending and how we do business, and then our financial planning and projecting our income and our cash flows.

Miller: How long are you expecting to have to pay back that loan to the state, that kind of emergency, “please help us survive” loan?

Carr: I think we’re in really good financial shape, relative to that. I mean, we have a balance that we’ve built up and the loan schedule carries through next year. It’s our federal funding and state funding that we have to rely on, and the timing of that. And if we get that within the relative time frame, we should be fine. We should be able to not only maintain service, but there’s an opportunity for us to enhance it in some ways. But it’s really about the timing of that funding.

Miller: Well, let’s turn to that. Let’s start with the state side. The governor is calling Oregon lawmakers back to Salem at the end of this month to pass some version of a transportation package that they failed to pass in the regular session. What’s at stake for your district in this vote?

Carr: Well, now, we have really great partners with ODOT and the state, and they’re really able to provide us with the STF [Special Transportation Fund] funding that we get. The problem for us is that we’re a small agency with not a lot of cash, so those delays can impact our operations if they go on too long.

There’s an opportunity for them to increase some of that. If we can get a little bit more money out of those funds, that’s really going to go a long way to provide better service in our mobility, in our paratransit dial-a-ride, and serving a lot of the folks that are either underserved or disproportionately affected by not being able to get transportation.

Miller: Based on what you have heard about what lawmakers are talking about now, do you feel like you will get the full amount of money that you had been hoping for during the session?

Carr: I don’t have that crystal ball. I wish I did. I’m feeling pretty comfortable that there’s real positive support and most folks understand, we serve a really underserved community and a lot of people that are extremely reliant on us for transportation. They don’t have a car, they don’t have the ability to drive. Those things are really critical, so this funding, I think, has a lot of support. Whether that dollar amount’s going to be the same or a little bit more to help us do more, that’s yet to be determined. But I’d like to think that most of the folks I’ve talked to have been overwhelmingly supportive of this and we’re optimistic that we’re gonna be able to do pretty well with that.

Miller: So that’s the state side. What kind of federal funding do you normally rely on?

Carr: Well, there’s formula funds, so we get reimbursed for our services we provide through a couple of different federal funds. That’s a really large chunk of what we do. And there’s been some delay associated with a recent lawsuit with the federal government. There’s an injunction, so it should not impact us. But there’s always that concern that any delays in funding really have an adverse impact on us because we’re so small and we don’t have large reserves of money.

When those funds get delayed for nine months or a year, that puts us almost into the red. So we just have to be a lot more fiscally constrained while we’re waiting for that to get sorted out through the courts and through the different processes, the folks processing those funds. So we feel pretty good that we’re able to get that money and we’ll be able to do a lot of good things. It’s just the timing of that, that can really affect us because we just don’t have sufficient reserves to be able to go too far, without getting those funds in a timely manner.

Miller: And just to be clear, this isn’t, say, a grant, where, if you don’t get the grant, you can’t do some new project you’re talking about. This is reimbursement for services that you have already spent money on?

Carr: Yes, that’s correct. There are grants and that’s the way the federal programs are established. I mean, it works out pretty well in most instances, because we’re able to provide this level of service. We’re able to do these things and the federal government has been really outstanding in their support. It’s just, again, a timing issue. And we’re going to be … because we are so limited on our budget and limited in our resources, when it gets pushed out so far, it just creates a cash flow situation where we have to just be a lot more mindful because we don’t have the extra money.

Miller: Your last job was at a public transportation district in Austin, Texas – a much, much bigger city and much bigger market. What was it about this job that appealed to you?

Carr: Oh, I love Astoria. I grew up here, I went to high school here. My mom lives here, my brothers live here. This is a great town. It’s a great community. I come here every year and it just really felt like this is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.

Coming with a lot of transit experience – I worked at CapMetro in Austin, Texas. I worked at RTC in Northern Nevada. So I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I’ve just had a lot of experience in running organizations like this, and working with buses, equipment, personnel and budgets. So it’s really a good fit for me and it’s a homecoming of sorts. I went salmon fishing yesterday at Buoy 10 and it was like one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that I get to do every fall now.

Miller: What’s it like to be doing this job in the place where you grew up?

Carr: It’s different. I tell you, every time I look around the corner, it’s like, “Oh, I did something there. I was there.” Then I’m sitting somewhere at a table at the fair and across from me is someone I went to high school with. It’s just got this dualism where it’s reliving my childhood in some ways. And then I’m meeting all these new people. I’m exploring this community from a much more intimate perspective and it’s just really cool. You get to come back here and be home, and that’s a unique experience.

Miller: What about the budget, where now your total budget is closer to a rounding error from some of the places you’ve worked in the past?

Carr: Oh, absolutely. There are zeros missing from our budget. But then, it’s like anything else. I’ve always looked at public funds as, if this was my money, how would I expend it? And I’m always mindful of where those dollars go. I track it pretty well, pretty close, and we just really have to understand that we have the public trust. We have a fiduciary duty and we just have to really be mindful of that money.

Because we are so fiscally constrained, you just have to pay a lot closer attention. Your long-term planning and your long-term vision gets a little bit hazier because you can’t really go too far beyond, but we still have to have that vision. You still have to look at, how can we be better? How can we reach out to the community and do more within the constraints that we do have? So it becomes a matter of applying technology, or just being creative and finding new ways to provide the service that we’ve traditionally done here.

Miller: Well, in the minute we have left or so, what are your biggest hopes for the future?

Carr: Well, I think there’s a way to reach out in the community in terms of, whether it’s a dial-a-ride or micro-transit type of thing, where we can take the conventional services that we provide and expand those into other areas and into ways that are more … With the right app or the right technology, we can expand that within the areas we currently operate and do it efficiently, effectively and at a reasonable cost.

Miller: David Carr, thanks very much.

Carr: All right, thank you.

Miller: David Carr is the executive director of the Sunset Empire Transportation District in Clatsop County

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