The Addison Township Board of Trustees voted unanimously at their Nov. 20 meeting to pay $3,500 in additional funding to the North Oakland Transportation Authority to put another bus on the road beginning next year.
Board members decided to take the additional funds from their community projects account, which has a balance of about $15,500.
NOTA provides free transportation to senior citizens, mentally and physically disabled people and welfare-to-work participants living in Oxford, Addison and Orion townships and their villages.
After losing $300,000 in federal and state funding earlier this year, NOTA was forced to eliminate its weekend services and cut its number of buses on the road during weekdays from 10 to nine as of September 1.
Beginning next year, the number of buses in service each day is expected to drop from nine to six.
‘This removal of the grant has seriously impacted NOTA,? said Pat Fitchena, Director of NOTA to the board members. ‘Doctors appointments, dialysis, chemotherapy, radiation and people going to work are the main priorities right now.?
That’s why Fitchena proposed the communities provide additional funding to keep a seventh bus on the road next year.
Unexpectedly, Orion Township at their Oct. 30 meeting voted to pay $35,700 for an entire bus, which was $19,056 more than NOTA requested, to keep an eighth bus on the road next year and challenged the other townships to do the same.
Addison currently pays NOTA $18,000 per year for service, but will now pay $21,500.
Oxford Twp. decided to table NOTA’s request for an additional $15,556 on top of the $80,000 it already pays until they saw what action Addison and Orion took.
Fitchena told the Addison board members that Crittenton Hospital in Rochester sent NOTA a check for $30,000 for a three-year commitment.
‘With the funding I have acquired from Crittenton Hospital…we’ll be able to put that seventh vehicle back in service (next year),? she said.