There is an old adage that, if you don't define a problem accurately, you'll never solve it. That may well apply to all the commotion over the state of the C&TS which seems to have focused, wrongfully in my opinion, on personal conflicts among the major players. Please remember that these same C&TSC Commissioners and CTSMC Directors have done wonders of good for the railroad over the past three years. The results are there for all to see.
Yes, something went wrong over the past several months, but to see the causes as rooted in personalities or as a conflict over power is often misleading. These kinds of problems are usually the
result of other, deeper
causes. In my own past direct experience with the operation of the railroad, the underlying causes have generally been
costs running out of control (for whatever reason, for example the Forest Service shutdown a few years back) and the attendant
financial risk which today under the Management Services Agreement clearly fall to the Commission.
So what has been happening to costs? Well Tim Tennant did enumerate these publicly at the meeting when he discussed the budget results, and these numbers have left me feeling queasy. The budget year started in July, 2009, so the railroad is 6-7 months into its latest fiscal year. Here are the results I heard (I'd appreciate anyone else who was there correcting me if I mis-heard).
1. Payroll is running $37,000 over budget YTD. Headcount is 28 employees vs. 21 projected for this off-season.
2. Materials and Parts $71,000 over budget YTD.
3. Supplies $36,000 over budget YTD.
4. Advertising essentially on budget.
5. Utilities $11,000 over budget YTD.
There may have been some other figures I missed, but that means that, after several years of meeting budget targets, CTSMC's spending has ballooned by an
unsustainable $155,000 halfway into the year. This is sufficient to put the Commission at real financial risk because it does not have a cash spigot that it can simply turn on.
So if folks want to get at the real cause of what went wrong, I'd suggest that, as usual, the problem is unsustainable expenditures, and I'd further suggest that both the Commission and CTSMC are addressing this, the real problem, all else is secondary.
