ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. \u2014 Miscommunication from the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority has led to St. Pete Beach getting a good deal for beach trolley service.<\/p>\n
The agreement was approved more than eight months past the deadline.<\/p>\n
But now, the trolley in St. Pete Beach will keep rolling through at least September.<\/p>\n
Visitors say the beach trolley provides a great service and value.<\/p>\n
“If we didn’t have that, then you would just take an Uber or something, and Uber is $60, $70,” said visitor Tara Kotasck. “And (the trolley is) $2 or $2.50. So it’s great. It’s awesome. It’s a great opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
At last week\u2019s city commission meeting, PSTA’s chief planning and community affairs officer, Darden Rice, talked about the mixup.<\/p>\n
The agreement with St. Pete Beach should have been approved before last October. He said that because of personnel changes at PSTA, the agreement fell through the cracks.<\/p>\n
“On our side, due to overlapping personnel changes at PSTA, there has been some confusion on our end as to who had the ownership in management overseeing the paperwork of the recent agreement,” Rice said. \u201cWe have now put a system in place and a new project management software, and we have a clear line of command and follow through that my department now oversees.\u201d<\/p>\n
PSTA wanted $308,000 for one year of service. But Rice said PSTA takes responsibility\u00a0and was willing to accept a much lower amount than the city had budgeted for at $220,000.<\/p>\n
“This isn\u2019t the type of thing that usually happens, but for the difference in our ledger book, in this case, it can be made up from the small surplus that we had budgeted,” Rice said.<\/p>\n
That proposed agreement saved the city nearly $88,000.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Karen Marriott said that even though some residents want the city to spend less money on driving people around, in this case she felt St. Pete Beach should accept the revised agreement with PSTA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019ve been very upfront in admitting that, like, ‘Look, something went wrong with the process last year. This contract is coming very late. We\u2019re paying for things that kind of already happened,” Marriott said. “In the interest of being good partners in our larger community, where they have agreed to lower the rate to what was already budgeted … it feels to me like the right thing to do.”<\/p>\n