As Dallas Area Rapid Transit\u2019s next CEO prepares to take the conductor’s seat, the agency he is leaving behind faces dire financial straits, raising further questions about DART\u2019s new hire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Jacksonville Transportation Authority, which Nathaniel Ford Sr. led for some 13 years, is anticipating a $39 million shortfall. The original operating budget totaled about $185 million for the 2026 fiscal year.<\/p>\n
There will be service cuts, and planned staffing reductions will slash the agency\u2019s workforce by more than a fifth, according to the Jacksonville Daily Record. In August, a JTA official said the agency had taken a line of credit for $30 million on the operations side and $10 million on the capital side to \u201ccatch up\u201d on its bills.<\/p>\n
These are sure markers of an organization in poor financial health. As JTA\u2019s long-tenured CEO, Ford is ultimately responsible for that. But while agency officials took a grilling over these issues at a Jacksonville City Council committee meeting last month, Ford was conspicuously absent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a little upset that the CEO isn\u2019t here. He should be answering these questions. And I like him, he\u2019s a friend, I know he\u2019s leaving, but he should be here,\u201d said council member Rory Diamond.<\/p>\n
We attempted to reach Ford through DART, but an agency spokesperson told us he does not work for DART yet, so we should reach out to JTA. We did so, but did not receive a response as of this writing.<\/p>\n
Lower-than-expected tax and fare revenues and higher-than-expected costs from items that were not correctly budgeted were among the causes of the shortfall, according to an auditor\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
The news that JTA is deeply cutting services and positions is especially unsettling given that Ford will be taking charge of our much larger transit agency next month. About $900 million in sales\u00a0tax flowed into DART last fiscal year. The agency employs nearly 3,700 people compared with\u00a0JTA\u2019s roughly 850.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Worse still, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan\u2019s administration told the Daily Record that neither her office nor JTA\u2019s board of directors were made aware of the scope of the agency\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n
We can see two likely explanations for that statement: either Ford did not know about these issues, or he did know, but didn\u2019t warn other local officials about them. Neither case is a good sign for DART\u2019s future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ford\u2019s annual salary with DART will be $515,000, according to his employment agreement. That\u2019s more than the Dallas city manager makes running an even bigger organization. And DART also gave Ford an $80,000 relocation package.<\/p>\n
For all that money, we certainly hope Ford will lead DART into a more favorable position than the one JTA now finds itself in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Dallas Area Rapid Transit\u2019s next CEO prepares to take the conductor’s seat, the agency he is leaving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":["post-441945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}