Mary Beth Labate (meeting Chair):

I think the sense of the Board is that we are directing the RIOC staff to take a look at some of our options with respect to operation of the Tram, particularly, as we've seen with this recently, David, the significant deficit that it runs, and we are particularly interested in taking a look at ridership on that third leg, the third shift, both in terms of ridership revenues and the cost of operating, so I would ask Patrick Siconolfi to come back to the Board with some data on that.  I think it would be helpful in our decision-making on the contract [for a firm to run and maintain the Tramway].

David Kraut (resident member of Board):

If the Chair will permit, I have to make two points in this area about the Tram:

The question of a third shift is not new with us.  Two previous administrations of this Corporation... the fact that cost-wise it makes no sense to continue that late shift.  In terms of practicality and the effect on the community, to eliminate the third shift appears to work a hardship on a certain portion of the population, and this has to be taken into consideration.  Another consideration is that, as I think most people in the community are aware, the Tram is getting old, and we're going to face another capitalization of the Tram in terms of ropeways and things like that, which we have to replace, that can cause some interruptions in service, and at the same time we might be bringing in a new outfit which might have its own standards of how the Tram should be operated.  But in any case, we're going to have to come up with capitalization of expenses as they come up, and this is also going to have to limit our total... which is what I had in mind as I was questioning Patrick [Siconolfi]... which is a major concern to me all the time, what its hours of operation are and what its effect on the community, and how we can afford to keep running it.

Leo Kayser (Board member):

Further along the issue of the tram, and I'd like to address this to actually the citizenry on the Island here, as a request, I think, to use their... to their elected officials on the City Council.

There's an issue of advertising as a potential source of revenue which may very well be, in effect, and in my opinion, is going to be required to maintain the safety level of the tram and make the capital improvements necessary to keep safety.

The City Council has voted, I've been informed... with all the democratic members voting one way and all the Republican members voting another, and you can imagine which way that is in terms of the vote – there are only four Republicans on the City Council – to tie our hand with respect to advertising unless the conditions, unless there's a sale to the... some arrangement made with the MTA to operate, or something.

At any rate, we need an unfettered ability to enter into arrangements for advertising to generate revenue.  To the extent there are people here who could talk to their elected representatives from the Island, who could, particularly the City Councilman, who could talk to his fellow Democrats, and, uh, change... have a reconsideration of the vote and make it clear that we could enter into a franchise operating giving us the ability to obtain advertising revenue without trying to force a result, which we don't have the ability to get anyway in terms of pushing on a string, because it takes two to work out any agreement with another authority, like the MTA.  We don't have that ability.

All that's going to happen ultimately is you're jeopardizing the safety of, uh, which we're not, in other words, we're not going to have a tram operate that might not be safe.

So all that's happening is the risk of shutting down the tram because of safety issues and the inability to raise revenue unless we have a freer hand to raise revenue without trying to exact, uh, arrangements which might, uh, discount fares or something like that or make pass arrangements so that you have the MetroCard [unintelligible].  Any conditions that put upon our ability to raise revenue through advertising is going to work to the detriment of people who are interested in continuation of the tram's functioning.

I think that... and I'm just saying this openly so that it will be reported to the people out here to use what political, uh, persuasion you can to have this reconsidered and to change the result.