- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(bright music) - This week on "Off The Record," CATS bus drivers vote to strike.

But what'll that look like to CATS bus riders?

Also more trains or more lanes?

Charlotte's plan for future transit growth runs smack into Raleigh's political reality.

At police headquarters, last year's crime statute of the homicide rate up, overall violent crime down, and more guns taken off the streets.

At City Hall, is $50 million a year enough to solve Charlotte's affordable housing problem?

Some council members say, maybe not.

At CMS, can they really find a new superintendent in four months or less?

School board members say, maybe so.

And at Charlotte's airport, no takeoffs, no landings, no problem, at least not now.

How grounding flights by the FAA affected CLT.

Plus, a famous name for the Airport's new aviation museum.

Lots to talk about next on PBS Charlotte.

(upbeat music) And from our PBS Charlotte Studios, near but not actually in Historic Plaza Midwood, I'm Jeff Sonier, and we're "Off The Record" talking about the stories that you've been talking about this week.

And if you watch the news, read the news and listen to the news, you'll recognize the names and faces around our virtual table.

Ely Portillo from WFAE.

Danielle Chemtob from Axio Charlotte, and Steve Harrison from WFAE.

You can also join the conversation at home or from your phone, just email your questions and comments to offtherecord@wtvi.org.

We got a comment this week that we are not located within Plaza Midwood, but we can see it from here.

So we will change the opening of the show accordingly for this show and future shows.

Thanks for joining us again this week, group, and let's talk first about the topic that we always seem to talk first about, that is CATS.

This week, we find, at least last weekend, that the bus drivers decided to vote to go out on strike.

It's not gonna happen right away, but if it does happen, we're looking at some considerable disruption for a lot of folks who really need those buses to get around.

Anyone want to take first crack at what may or may not be happening at CATS regarding this possible strike?

- Yeah, so the bus drivers have had a disagreement about the union contract with the private company that runs Charlotte's Bus System.

A company called RATP Dev actually operates the bus system and employs the drivers, not CATS.

So it's a little bit of a weird arrangement there.

They have rejected several contracts, and this past weekend, they actually voted to authorize a strike.

Now the soon as that could happen would be 30 days after they file all the paperwork.

So, you know, in terms of an actual walkout and buses stopping running, we're looking at, you know, maybe end of the first week, second, (coughs) excuse me, beginning of the second week in February if that were to happen.

But there's really going to be the prospect of serious disruption here, because while CATS will try to maintain service on at least a dozen core routes with the highest ridership, they have said that they can't guarantee they'll be able to do that.

They don't know how many workers will show up on any given day.

And because of this somewhat unusual arrangement where a third party private company actually runs the buses, CATS has said that they won't have any forewarning or foreknowledge of how many drivers might show up to work on any given day if a walkout occurs, until that day.

So it's got the potential to be a really chaotic situation and a big disruption for the people who don't have any way to get around besides the bus system.

- Yeah, I don't know how you plan.

I saw that Channel 9 said the vote was 256 to 14, 256 drivers voting two strike, only 14 voting not to strike.

That doesn't represent all the drivers.

They didn't all vote.

But yeah, how do you run any routes without drivers to drive those routes?

I mean, that, you know, having a plan to run 13 routes kind of sounds like, I mean, you know, the details, you know, devil's in the details, and I don't know that we have enough detail now to know if that's really feasible, right?

- No, and even that would require 78 drivers, I think they've said.

So, you know, even running that small amount would require a lot of drivers to come in.

- Yeah.

Steve, you've written a lot about how the ridership has dropped significantly over the past decade or so.

I guess the disruption's gonna be significant for the folks who need the buses, but, you know, when you compare it to what this might have meant a couple of years ago, the last time there was a potential strike against CATS, the impact isn't quite as much anymore because there's simply aren't as many routes or riders anymore, right?

- Yeah, that's true.

If you go back, I think there was a talk about a strike in 2013.

At that point, the bus system was at its peak.

There were about 2 million trips each month.

You know, a trip is there and back.

Now we're down to about 500,000 trips.

Now that's still about 10,000 people a day that rely on the bus.

So it's a smaller number, but 10,000 is still a lot of people who need the bus service to get to work, to get to the doctor.

So while the impact won't be as significant as it was in the past, it's still a lot of people who are going to need help.

- Yeah.

- And I think it's important to note that we're at this impasse because of months of negotiation, and one of the big, you know, factors that drivers have been, yes, it's pay, and it also has to do with the time off policy, which obviously kind of came into controversy last year when CATS was saying they saw these, you know, unexcused absences as they described it.

Of course, it came out that some of those were, you know, vacation and planned absences.

And as well, I think a big thing has been safety since the death of Ethan Rivera almost a year ago now, right?

You know, they feel like there hasn't been much addressed.

You know, I spoke with some of them last year, and they felt like there hadn't been adequate safety measures.

And I don't know, you know, what has sort of come up in those specific negotiations, but I think clearly that's still a major concern.

- I know the bus drivers have also been concerned about the fact that they've been kind of made out as the villains, as CATS has kind of worked through their operational problems.

You know, they turned down an 11% pay increase.

So obviously, it's not just about money.

These other issues are obviously important to the union membership here.

So, you know, as they continue to negotiate, that's a good sign.

But the fact that some of these issues seem hard to resolve, it's not just, you know, adding a couple more, you know, numbers to the pay increase.

Any kind of anticipation of what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks with these two groups that seemingly aren't getting along very well right now?

- Well, the last time we were here almost a decade ago, they actually went right up to the deadline and resolved the contract disputes, I believe, the day before a strike was supposed to occur.

So it's very possible we'll see something like that again.

It's really not in anyone's interest to have a strike or a walkout here.

I also wanted to mention the socioeconomic demographic factors at play here.

A large majority of bus riders are low-income people of color who don't have an alternative.

So, you know, this is really a serious disruption for them.

And, you know, bus drivers, a majority of them, you know, I think the starting pay is about 18.80 an hour right now, so that's 36,000 a year roughly, base amount.

So we're not talking about a very high-income workforce either, right?

So in some ways, you know, I think that it's probably, they say negotiations are continuing.

I think, you know, I don't have any means to forecast it, but I think it's likely we'll see some kind of agreement.

But long-term, the bigger questions are what can the city do to save this bus system that, as Steve mentioned, has already seen a 75% ridership decline before we're even in a strike situation?

- Yeah, and city council, City, you know, Hall is pretty much on the sidelines for this whole thing, right?

They can't do much about this negotiation.

And that's gotta be frustrating, especially to the critics at City Hall who seemingly want more of a say in what happens at CATS from if the operations to the planning to the future expansion.

I mean, this is another example of, I think, what you wrote about last week, Ely, about how the management, the structure of CATS right now is kind of unwieldy as when it comes to, you know, a government agency that doesn't really answer to the government in this case.

- Yeah, and because the bus drivers are employed by this third-party private contractor, CATS and the city are really in a lot of ways kind of sitting on the sidelines watching, watching them play chicken with each other, with this negotiation.

And that's a tough spot to be in because they can't really influence the outcome very much since the city under, you know, North Carolina law can't negotiate directly with a union.

- By the way, one more clarification.

You know, we've talked about it being a two-tiered transit system that we have here.

This strike vote or a possible strike won't affect the operation of the light rail system at all.

Right?

Two different groups of employees.

Two different sets of rules, I suppose, right?

- They're city employees.

- That's right.

- And that has to do with the fact that they're not unionized.

- Yeah, and again, you know, we've talked about, you know, where the funding goes and where the majority of the funding goes and whether that serves the ridership that needs it most.

And we kind of got a secondary story this week, bombshell of sorts, I suppose, coming from the Speaker of the House, Tim Moore, speaking in Charlotte about a transportation plan that right now he doesn't seem to care for very much.

Steve, you, you talked to him about that.

That was a kind of a rude awakening for folks who have been pushing this transportation plant, right?

- That's right.

He and Senate Leader, Phil Berger, were speaking at a Charlotte Business Alliance event, and then afterwards they talked to reporters.

We asked about the transit plan and whether they would support it.

And, you know, I went into the event thinking that Moore and Berger might, you know, kind of say, "Well, we have concerns, but we're, you know, open to listening to talking to Charlotte."

Well, instead Tim Moore really just blasted the plan repeatedly.

You know, he kind of went out of his way at several occasions to talk about what he thought were the flaws with Charlotte's plan.

He says the city needs to focus more on building roads.

He kind of talked repeatedly about bike lanes and how he didn't think they were particularly effective or we're going to convince more people to ride their bike.

That, you know, touched off a very passionate debate within the city as to what's the best way for Charlotte to grow.

And while, you know, people in Charlotte feel, a lot of people feel that the speaker is misguided, Tim Moore is in control, because without his blessing, Charlotte can't get a penny sales tax to move the plan forward.

- Yeah, a couple of quotes from your story, "Tim Moore said the plan needs to be focused on road capacity instead of trying to transform people's habits, trying to force them onto transportation modes they really don't care for right now."

That is 180-degree different direction than most of our transit and transportation planning in this town, you know?

How do we get to the point where the Speaker of the House that holds the purse strings is diametrically opposed to the folks who are, you know, who need those purse strings to make this plan happen?

- I think it just shows that- - I think it's gonna be.

I'm sorry, go ahead, Danielle.

- No, I was just gonna say, I think it just shows that not much has changed in the last few years when it comes to these negotiations.

You know, and I think the Ledger had a headline yesterday that was basically, you know, let's admit the transit plan is dead, right?

Like nothing has really gone anywhere on the crux of the issues which are getting Raleigh on board.

There may be sort of a different tone with the northern towns in that negotiation, but still nothing concrete around the red line, because, of course, Norfolk Southern has to be on board as well.

So, you know, they have these major issues that have basically been the issues the entire time, that we don't really see a whole lot of progress on.

- Yeah, Tony Macia, our friend at the Ledger wrote, "Is a transit plan without funding really a plan at all?"

Which kind of brings us back to square one.

Is this the point where Charlotte has to start rethinking this plan and maybe conforming some of this plan to what the legislature will pass so that they maybe can salvage some other parts that they think are the most important parts?

I mean, I don't know how this works out.

They seem so far apart right now on the basic funding for any transit expansion right now.

- I think that what you said, Jeff, being so far apart is really a key point because Charlotte, their whole vision is, by 2040, to have half of the trips taken in the city being in something other than a car.

And the House Speaker is saying, "Well, people drive today.

We need to accommodate them."

So, you know, I think the city can move some, and add road funding to the mix, but it's gonna be hard for them to put forth a kind of roads-first plan or a roads-equal plan because that's diametrically opposed to kind of everything the city and the city leaders believe in.

- I saw that the mayor said on your air this week on WFAE that she hopes that Moore will give us a chance to follow our plan, but when she was asked about roads, she said, "Well, we're willing to build the type of roads that allow for mass transit and mobility."

I'm not sure what that means.

Can anyone translate?

- Yeah, I would say that means roads that include protected bike lanes and space for bus-only lanes.

I think that was kind of how I read that statement when she said that, because she's basically saying, "Well, yeah, we'll build roads, but we want them to have space for these other modes," which doesn't really get you any closer, because that is, again, the exact opposite of what Tim Moore was saying, we need car capacity, and, man, he really does not like bike lanes.

That was kind of repeated.

- Which was sort of unfortunate timing given the death of a cyclist, what was it, Sunday or Monday, you know, on a lane that did not have, on a road that did not have a bike lane, excuse me.

And so I think the timing there was a little, was, yeah, not ideal.

The other thing I wanna say too is like, there's obviously the environmental and sort of the city priorities that Steve and Ely just mentioned around, you know, the city's not gonna turn around and just start expanding roads everywhere.

But also, you know, there's this idea that that doesn't actually work.

That's been coming into the periphery more, called induced demand.

And essentially it means that if you widen a road, you know, indefinitely, basically demand is gonna return because people will see that it's easier to drive, and then the congestion returns, and then you've sort of not solved the problem.

And I think that's becoming also another concept that people are starting to talk about, and kind of pulls into question whether or not, you know, that's even an effective way to address congestion to begin with.

- You know, I was gonna, Jeff, just kind of piggyback on what Danielle said, in kind of unpacking the Speaker Tim Moore's comments, I was speaking to someone close to him about kind of what was really driving what was he was saying, and a lot of that during the Business Alliance presentation, the Speaker talked again and again about the need to widen Interstate 85, and to Danielle's point, there has been a lot of criticism about a project to expand the highway in Gaston County with this idea of induced demand, that it's only gonna, you know, encourage more people to drive, that apparently particularly really bothered the House Speaker.

He lives in Kings Mountain.

He's in those traffic tie-ups all the time.

I think he may have felt, "Look, this is a project that's very important to me," and there are city leaders and city officials in Charlotte that are kind of, you know, criticizing this project that's important to him.

And then they're kind of at the same time coming to him asking for his help in passing a penny sales tax.

And I think that really bothered Tim Moore, and it came out during those comments again and again.

- Yep.

Hey, one last thought on this.

Are we getting closer to the point now where the city realizes, you know, it's a closed door in Raleigh, and they have to start looking internally at maybe raising money locally through property tax increases or something like that to fund at least some of this transit plan?

I know that's not been something that anyone really wants to talk about, but we're kind of at the point where you have to talk about the alternatives if the door's closed in Raleigh, right?

- Yeah, and I think that you can get a lot of the city's smaller priorities with something like a property tax bump or bigger bonds.

For example, you could fund a lot of the sidewalks.

You could probably fund an expansion of the bus system with those sources.

You could fund some of your greenways, but what you really can't get with the property tax without a massive increase that I don't see being on the table is the silver line, which is, you know, kind of the linchpin, the biggest thing the city wants.

You know, that's gonna be more than $8 billion, and we know how transit budgets go.

It'll probably be much more than that, and the city would not be able to raise enough money to build that probably through any obvious means we can see besides the one penny sales tax, which needs Raleigh's blessing.

- Yeah, that's gonna be a hard discussion for a lot of city council members running for reelection or running to oust the current city council members, I would think between now and November.

But, again, Tim Moore kind of made it perfectly clear that that's the discussion, that's one of the discussions that's gonna have to be had, I suppose, if you wanna go forward with any sort of a transportation plan and the funding that goes with it.

Good discussion about that.

And, again, we seem to spend a lot of time talking about CATS, but other stories that we wanna touch on this week.

Crime stats for 2022 came out this week, kind of a mixed bag, just a couple of highlights.

Violent crimes down overall, 5%, homicides up 10%, and more guns off the street.

The police chief touting the fact that they had an 8% increase in the number of gun seizures, that's 3,000+ guns not on the streets today.

Your take on whether these numbers represent progress in what a lot of folks feel like is an unsafe city, in particular in many neighborhoods.

- Well, the violent crime being down is, I think, a good thing, but the homicide number, of course, stands out.

The number of reported rapes was down pretty dramatically, which drove some of that.

But, you know, when you look at the city's numbers overall, the police chief was really touting, you know, that violent crime has gone down two years in a row, but property crimes have increased, and vehicle thefts in particular, car thefts were up almost 20%.

And I think a lot of that contributes to, you know, a feeling of people saying, "Gee, is this safe?"

You know, if your car gets stolen, that's gonna really impact that, even if, you know, the number of reported assaults is down slightly.

And regarding the number of guns seized, I think that is a positive, those crime guns, as the chief called them, coming off the streets.

The overwhelming majority of homicides in Charlotte are committed with a firearm as in most cities.

So, you know, I think, you could look at that and say that's a positive.

More illegal guns being seized, but at the same time, if your murders are jumping more than 10% in a year, is that making a difference, is it keeping up with it?

I think that's more of an open question.

- And I think too, it's interesting that, you know, the homicide, I think there were 110 homicides last year.

After, I think, in the covid year 2020, there were more than 120.

Those are really high numbers.

Now, the homicide rate is still much lower than it was in the early 1990s when crime was at its peak in Charlotte.

But at the same time, if you go back just about a decade ago, we had about 60 homicides a year.

So while we are still off our all-time highs, this is a much more dangerous city than it was in 2013, 2015.

- Yeah, I think the increase in the property crimes, you know, they don't get the headlines, but those are the ones that people, you know, are affected personally by as well in just sheer numbers.

You know, that's another reason why folks who live in, quote, "safe" neighborhoods also feel like the city's getting more dangerous because they're seeing that kind of crime infiltrate their neighborhoods as well.

Hey, one thing that was buried in here that didn't get a lot of headlines, maybe it will in the coming week, of school safety.

They said they had a 14% decrease in threats investigated, a 68% decrease in firearms seized on campuses.

That's only six all year long.

And 145% increase in school-related tips from crime stoppers.

That's kind of sounds like their effort to build a bond with the schools and in particular the kids coming out of neighborhoods, that sounds like it's working.

And that's gotta be good news for anyone with a child in CMS right now, right?

- Yeah, especially after the big surge in gun seizures we saw last year.

It's hard to say if it's the body scanners that they've installed or something else.

But those numbers have come way down, which is comforting at a time when, you know, firearms in schools and school shootings continue to be such a problem.

- Yeah, it's nice when we don't have to talk about that every week on this show, and that's good news coming out of the crime stats from last year.

City council met for most of this week, two days at least, talking about jobs and housing, timing is everything, right?

Zillow says Charlotte's the number one hottest housing market for the upcoming year.

And we've got a revaluation coming based on home values as of January 1st.

Kind of a perfect storm of high-priced housing that a lot of folks can't afford.

You wrote a little bit about that this week, Danielle.

Tell us about what council discussed and what some of the nonprofits are doing kind of in response to that.

- Yeah, you know, I think it was a lot of sort of setting up what the problem was, and, you know, as you just outlined, I think we can make that clear.

There's another stat that was really, really shocking that the economist at UNC Charlotte presented.

I think it was 80% of Charlotteans could not afford the median-priced home in the Charlotte region, which was truly, you know, I mean, that's a massive, it's way more than the majority, right?

So it just shows how much of a crisis it is.

In terms of solutions, you know, I feel like that was kind of left more open.

I mean, obviously we have this 50 million bond structure where we're funding housing units, funding developers to build housing units.

The fundamental problem that the city's facing right now, and I don't know that there was necessarily like one good solution kind of for this problem that came out of the summit, is that construction costs are rising so much that they are, you know, basically able to fund less and less units because, you know, 50 million has stayed the same the last few years.

So for example, I believe it was Ed Riggs who said that, you know, 50 million would fund approximately 300 units now.

You know, we have a problem that numbers in, I think, the shortage, the latest number I've seen is 34, 35,000 or something like that.

And not to mention, you know, that we have basically different levels of income funded.

So even if it's 300, say it's 300 units, maybe 100 of those, actually probably be a little bit less than that, would be for the lowest income bracket, even though that's where the highest need is.

So I think they have this fundamental problem that they're gonna have to address with the trust fund structure.

You know, some council members say, "Well, let's just boost the money, right?"

More money, you could triple that, you know, whatever it is.

But others kind of wanna reexamine what they're funding, you know, with the 50 million, and is there a better way to use that money?

- And you wrote about United Way getting involved with neighborhoods as well.

That's gotta be at least some help in our last minute or so.

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, so United Way made an announcement yesterday that basically they're gonna spend, it's a little over half of their money just directly with grassroots organizations, community organizations, as opposed to kind of more legacy, you know, nonprofits that you might have heard of, like the Girl Scouts or the Boy Scouts, right?

Like groups that are embedded in communities.

And they said that that was driven by, you know, basically all of the social change, the economic mobility ranking, the protests after Keith Lamont Scott.

And so they're hoping to, you know, that money will basically get closer to the needs in these communities that are high-need.

- Yeah.

As usual, we've got more topics than we've got time.

Couple of things we didn't get to this week, the superintendent search at CMS, school board members say they wanna finish it up by the end of April, nationwide search in four months or less.

And one of the newly elected school board members is heading up that search committee for the board.

So we will see if that new majority of newly elected school board members makes a difference, and competing with other cities, we can find the right person to keep the job for longer than just a couple of years this time around.

Flights grounded at Douglas Airport nationwide.

It was a FAA problem, no long-term effect apparently at the airport itself.

And a new name for the aviation museum, the Sullenberger Aviation Museum in honor of Sully Sullenberger who landed the miracle on the Hudson flight in New York that was bound to Charlotte a couple of years ago.

He was there for the presentation, or the new naming ceremony this week as well.

Stories we'll talk about hopefully in the next couple of weeks, but out of time this week.

I want to thank our panel for joining us.

As always, great discussion.

And thank you for joining us at home.

If you've got questions or comments, we respond.

Just send them to OffTheRecord@wtvi.org.

Thanks for joining us this week, and we'll see you next time on "Off The Record."

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.