SAN MATEO, Calif. — Discussions over the governance of Caltrain have broken down, reflecting concerns about a lawsuit between the agencies involved in operating the San Francisco Bay Area commuter railroad.
The San Mateo Daily Journal reports board chair Dev Davis attended Friday’s Caltrain meeting but would not participate in discussion of the governance issue. Three other board members — two, like Davis, from the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, and one from the City of San Francisco — did not attend, and two others representing San Francisco left after the public comment period. That forced the end of the meeting because of a lack of enough members to continue.
Representatives from the Santa Clara VTA, San Francisco, and the San Mateo County Transit District, or SamTrans, make up the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, which oversees Caltrain. Friday’s meeting was one of a series to reconsider the structure of Caltrain governance, the source of friction between the three agencies that nearly halted a ballot initive to fund Caltrain last year.
The absences and departures were triggered by a June 22 resolution by the SamTrans board about money SamTrans may be owed from 1991, when the joint powers authority was formed and purchased the Caltrain right of way. That resolution directed that San Francisco and the VTA be sent letters asking how they plan to reimburse SamTrans for the $82 million it paid for the right-of-way.
Legal counsel for the Santa Clara VTA advised that agency’s members not to participate in the governance meetings until a review of potential legal issues raised by the SamTrans resolution could be reviewed, according to a letter from the Santa Clara VTA chair, Glenn Hendricks.
Cupertino Today reports SamTrans officials called the breakdown of the meeting shocking and unnecessary, quoting SamTrans board chair Charles Stone as saying his agency “is deeply disappointed that its partner agencies have abruptly halted the $2 milliion-plus governance review process in their refusal to participate” in the third of three planned workshops on the issue.
Stone said SamTrans remains open to governance improvements, but that “what we have witnessed so far is two of the three member agencies seeking to take over control through a new governance structure while leaving large outstanding debts incurred for the current one.”
The review of governance was required in the ballot measureapproving a one-eighth-cent sales tax to fund Caltrain. That was part of a deal to earn support of officials in San Francisco and Santa Clara County, who had threatened to keep the measure off the ballot because of their unhappiness over San Mateo County’s dominance of Caltrain governance [see “Digest: Brightline ends marketing agreement …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 8, 2020]. Passage of the initiative created a dedicated funding stream expected to be more than $100 million annually [see “Digest: Metra, Amtrak ask to continue mediation …,” News Wire, Nov. 6, 2020]
