City council has instructed city administration to look at the possibility of fare-free public transit.
Poverty Free Thunder Bay made a presentation to elected officials Monday, which led to Current River Ward councillor Andrew Foulds to draft up a motion to have administration look at financial implications of implementing fare-free public transit.
At Large councillor Aldo Ruberto thinks city staff have enough on their plate.
“Administration, from what I’m hearing, they have 5,000 reports to do and we’re going to budget this month! It’s just going to delay, delay and delay… meanwhile this group has done a lot of the heavy lifting already so why not let them take the lead because they’re very capable of doing that,” says Ruberto.
The At Large member was reminded that council can only direct administration to do work, not the public.
Fellow At Large councillor Peng You echoed Ruberto’s thoughts of getting all the information needed to make an informed decision.
“This is a huge topic! C’mon this is number one! We’d be the first city in Canada to do this,” exclaims You.
Andrew Foulds wants to have the recommendations back in time to be considered in the 2021 Budget, but Neebing Ward Councillor Cody Fraser has his doubts.
“Is this going to happen in 2021? Are we going to reduce the fare by a dollar? I’ll tell you right now, I’m probably not going to support that,” notes Fraser. “What I will support going forward is signaling to the federal government for which we both have both area members of parliament [Marcus Powlowski and Patty Hajdu] in power right now. I don’t think we should underestimate that. Having Mayor Bill Mauro and Michael Gravelle in office and sitting around the cabinet table for as long as they did, we can’t even understand the value of that.”
The goal is to have the report back in front of council on or before February 2nd 2021.
