Council spars over bus shelters
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on August 7, 2018 5:50 AM
The Goldsboro City Council was in general agreement about the need for more bus shelters throughout the city at its meeting Monday evening but differed sharply on the city's role in getting the shelters built.
Councilman Bevan Foster brought up the shelters during the council's 5 p.m. work session Monday. He said that the city should take a more active stance on building shelters around the city, particularly at bus stops in low-income areas like those around Slocumb and Herman streets.
"Those are heavy areas," Foster said. "Every time I go by them, I mean, I see at least five or six people waiting there, especially in the mornings, the afternoon around 11 or 12 and then again sometimes around 4 or 5 o'clock," he said. "I see a lot of people at those stops just sitting on benches, no shelter or nothing if it rains."
Foster said the shelters along Berkeley Boulevard cost around $4,000 each. Along with pouring concrete -- which Foster said the city could handle in-house -- each shelter would come out to around $5,000.
With that, Foster made a motion for the city to purchase and construct three shelters -- once each at The Grand at Day Point apartment complex and Seymour Apartments and another between Herman and Slocumb streets.
Councilman Antonio Williams followed up Foster's comments by listing off several locations which he said are in need of a shelter. Williams said he had driven along each of the Goldsboro-Wayne Transportation Authority -- also known as Gateway -- bus routes earlier that day, and he presented maps of each route with potential shelter locations marked along them.
Those locations included bus stops near Goldsboro High School, the Wayne County Courthouse, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Salvation Army, among several others.
The council's disagreement came over whether or not the council should act independently of Gateway in creating shelters. Mayor Chuck Allen said that making recommendations for shelter locations is the purview of the Gateway board, not the council, and that the council should wait for information from Gateway staff instead of acting on its own.
Goldsboro Community Relations Director Shycole Simpson-Carter said that Gateway staff was asked in May to begin assessing where shelters need to be placed, but that process is still ongoing.
Foster expressed frustration with the idea of waiting on Gateway to get back to the city on recommendations. He said the city has the resources and the information to handle the shelter issue by itself.
"It's not making any sense that we're forced to have to defer it back to them to do something when we could simply do it ourselves," Foster said. "We have the staff to pour the concrete and do whatever we need to do out there."
Allen said he agreed with the need for the shelters, but that the council should go through the proper channels when making decisions around the bus system.
"Personally, I'm not arguing with you at all," Allen said. "I'm not saying that we don't need every shelter you mentioned. All I'm asking is that we go through the Gateway board."
Foster cut him off.
"And I'm saying no," Foster said.
Foster said the city did not have to construct all of the shelters that Williams suggested at once and could just add the three he recommended.
Allen again asked that the council include Gateway in the process, and Foster again chafed at the idea.
"They haven't gotten back with (Simpson-Carter) since May, and (Williams) went out and got all those stops in one day," Foster said. "How long is it going to take them? We're still going to have people standing out here. I mean come on, we need to move.
"Every time something comes up, we do this. We defer it to something else, something else, and it just takes longer and longer."
When it came time for a vote, the motion failed 2-4. Foster and Williams voted in favor, while Allen and councilmen David Ham, Bill Broadaway and Gene Aycock voted in opposition. Councilman Mark Stevens was not in attendance.