The Greensboro Transit Authority (GTA) which is in charge of running the bus system in Greensboro had a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, April 23, but the meeting had to be canceled.

The reason for the cancelation was that the GTA no longer exists.

At its meeting on Tuesday, April 16 the Greensboro City Council rescinded the ordinance that created the GTA.

The City Council replaced the GTA with the Greensboro Transit Advisory Commission (GTAC), but the City Council didn’t appoint any members to the GTAC, nor did it set or approve a meeting schedule for the GTAC.  With no members there was no way for the GTAC to set its own meeting schedule.

You might say this was a bit of a snafu.  At the City Council meeting there was some discussion about whether to have the mayor appoint the chairman or have the GTAC members elect their own chairman like the city’s other boards and commissions.  The decision was made to allow the GTAC to elect its own chairman, but what no councilmember asked is who those members were.

City Councilmember Justin Outling said, “My understanding was that the authority members would be advisory commission members.”

Outling added that having spoken with several members of the city staff, he understand the reason staff decided the move from the now defunct GTA board to the GTAC was not automatic.

He said, “I understood we were changing the structure, but in terms of membership it would be the same.”

Outling said his understanding is that at the next City Council meeting on Tuesday, May 7 the City Council would be asked to vote to appoint all the members of the old GTA to the new GTAC board to complete the term of office to which they had been appointed to the GTA board.

Outling said that operating with an “abundance of caution” the staff and legal department had determined that the members had to be officially appointed to the newly created GTAC.

The GTAC will function in much the same fashion as the GTA has for years and the reason for abolishing the GTA and creating the GTAC, is because the GTA had a vast amount of power that it never exercised.  On paper the GTA had the power to set fares, establish routes and set the budget.  But the GTA had always operated not as an “authority” but as an advisory commission, advising the City Council on fares, routes and budgets which will now be the function of the GTAC.

So as things stand right now the city has no GTA and a GTAC with no members.

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