City Council To Approve Matching Funds For Transportation

Washington City Council was visited by Sheila Gombita, Executive Director of Freedom Transit. She was there to encourage the authorization of $110,709 in funding for matching funds provided by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Each year Freedom Transit is required to provide a funding match of 15% for its transportation funding and they reach out to the city, county and several surrounding communities to reach that goal. Gombita did warn council that this may not be the last time they hear from her this year. Public transportation is funded by a 4.4% portion of state sales taxes. Under a proposal from Governor Josh Shapiro, that portion would increase by 1.75% to 6.15% of state sales tax revenue. If that scenario were to pass the legislature, that would cause Freedom Transit to have to come up with approximately $70,000 in additional match funds to qualify for the more than $450,000 anticipated.  Gombita said that she wanted to warn council that she could return to seek additional match funds from the current list of funding partners if necessary.   She says Freedom Transit is “one of 5 transit agencies across the Commonwealth that are required to provide 15% local match (which includes PRT and SEPTA).  However, our agency, and our agency alone, has meetings scheduled with local legislators to discuss our concern with coming up with these additional funds and for language to assist us with managing the level of local match funding.  PRT and SEPTA are not looking to eliminate this discrepancy”.   Council will vote on the funding request Thursday.