AUDIT EXISTING COUNTY TRANSIT FIRST

Cape Girardeau County's never-ending inquiry into a way to provide countywide public transportation continues to drag on.

It appears the effort will be delayed even longer while the County Commission and its newly appointed transit authority sort out whether a transit director should be hired, whether the commission or transit authority should do the hiring and where the money to pay a director should come from.

Since county commissioners first began hearing -- several years ago -- complaints from rural residents who would use a transit system, the issue has been studied to death.

The transit authority agreed it needed a director. At the suggestion of Commissioner Max Stovall, the authority asked the commission to allocate the money to hire one. But the presiding commissioner, Gerald Jones, said the commission isn't ready to foot the bill. Instead, he said the transit authority should explore sources of funding for a director.

Commissioner Larry Bock wondered whether the director would be a county employee or an employee of the transit authority, and no one knew for sure. Now that must be researched.

Meanwhile, almost five years have passed, and the people of Cape Girardeau County still have no public transportation system.

The transit authority should do something to move ahead. It could immediately begin by auditing all of the existing transit systems that get public money, determine how much each receives, find out how many vehicles each has, the services offered, how many employees each has, whether they are full-time or part-time workers and the routes they run and how often.

The audit should include local school bus systems, state school bus systems, Southeast Missouri State University's transportation system and Kelley Transportation's taxi system, all of which receive local, state or federal money. Officials from each system should then be brought together to determine how all of the systems could be put to use under a coordinated plan to provide countywide public transportation.

Since everyone seems to agree that what is needed is a system that brings together existing transportation services rather than a single, county-operated system, the gathering of that information seems a proper step toward a coordinated plan for public transportation. With that information, a determination could be made on whether a feasible public transportation program can be put together.