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| Volume 18, Issue 1 | Winter 2006 |
CTAA, Caring About You! Dale Marsico, Executive DirectorCommunity Transportation Association of America Washington, DC As all of you know from Federal Flashes (www.ctaa.org/fednews/clips/index.asp), Community Transportation Magazine (www.ctaa.org/ct/), and our website (www.ctaa.org), your association was hard at work in 2005 on key areas that are important to everyone: providing community and public transportation across your nation. Together, we've made this year's reauthorization - SAFETEA-LU - the kind of legislation that supports our vision and your work every day. Toward the end of the year, we were able to take the first major steps in continuing services for those who need Medicaid transportation as well as introducing vital reforms in that system. Our collective work is about more than legislating. We're always seeking tools to allow you to better serve your customers and your communities. Over the last year I know that each of you have been challenged by rising fuel costs, which have severely limited your efforts to help people, especially as many turn to community and public transit as a way of controlling their own fuel costs. Keeping that in mind, we are pleased to announce that our association has reached an agreement with a major fuel supplier that can help you control your fuel costs in this period of sudden price increases and market uncertainties. This new member benefit brings the services of Mansfield Oil to our members with the best fuel discounting and purchasing options available to our industry, particularly to smaller providers. John McBeth, our association's president, was the first person to begin discussing his system's needs with Mansfield Oil and now he's an enthusiastic supporter of their efforts. He wants to encourage all of you in taking the first steps to better controlling fuel costs and needs. There are a variety of services offered under this arrangement including on-site bulk fuel control, reduced fuel-related expenses, remote tank monitoring and fuel transaction tracking, petroleum equipment sales and installation and repair and maintenance management. For more information on this valuable new member service, our contact with Mansfield Oil is Dee Baldwin, who can be reached at (866)275-7342 or via e-mail: dbaldwin@mansfieldoil.com. As many of you know, some of these options might require special financing and we're ready to help you with those as well. For more information on all of our financing options, go to www.ctaa.org/TRANSITFUNDING/ or contact Patrick Kellogg with the Association at (202)415-9682 or via e-mail at Kellogg@ctaa.org. In addition to the rise in fuel prices, all of you are affected by the dramatic increases in costs for heating and cooling your offices and facilities. This is a good time for members to remember that our Savings Solutions for Energy Program is also available for members. This no-cost benefit is handled for us by Savings Solutions, our Utility Audit Service partner, who can help you determine where you can save money on your existing energy, water/sewer, waste removal/recycling, and telecommunications services. Please contact APPI at (800)520-6685 or via e-mail: info@appienergy.com and make sure to let them know you're with the Community Transportation Association. Both of these energy management activities can only help you in this time of energy change, and may allow you to control costs in a way that will not erase our hard-won efforts in SAFETEA-LU. Finally, all of you providing non-emergency medical transportation - especially under Medicaid - have had to deal with special licensing and background checks for your staff engaged in those services and for others who work with seniors and children. We've established a new relationship with Intellicorp, a nationwide service that can assist you through the licensing and background check process at extremely low member rates. This new service gives you instant access to billions of public records - exactly the data you need to make the best possible choices in your hiring and recruiting decisions. Our contact at Intellicorp is Matt Garbincus and he can be reached at (440)542-2107 or via e-mail at: mgarbincus@intellicorp.net. As always, we'll be searching for more opportunities like this in the year ahead, but we know these three membership services will be exceptionally important to you at this time. So please look at these three member benefits as ways to help you meet the challenges you face each day. Thanks for all your support and have a very Happy New Year!  Join Community Transportation Association of AmericaThe synergy produced from being part of a larger organization is often hard to put a value on. Never-the-less, the benefits are real, measurable and appreciated. This was truly experienced in the work that CTAA contributed to the highway reauthorization bill recently passed by Congress. Many of the features rural transit organizations were fighting for are found in this bill. Agreeably, not all the credit can go to CTAA, but they represented rural and small urban transit, and the 5311 and 5310 grant programs received major increases in funding. If you go to the CTAA website under join: www.ctaa.org/about/mission.asp you'll find a whole list of areas of interest to transit providers and the multiple benefits of becoming a member. CTAA believes, as do we transit providers, that "Effective public and community transportation contributes mightily to the quality of life of the people living in the cities, towns and communities in which it operates." CTAA is dedicated to making sure that our approach to transporting people and the technology needed to operate public transportation systems do not become outdated, and that new and expanded community transportation alternatives are available for all people across the country - not just those in large metropolitan cities. CTAA recognizes the challenges faced by rural transit systems that have great distances to cover and smaller population bases to draw from for support of our programs. CTAA's website (www.ctaa.org) has a wealth of information supporting all functions of transit. It includes information on training programs, national legislative activity, conferences, national roadeos and success stories from all parts of the country. On the website you'll also find opportunities for professional development, technical assistance, transit finance and an information station with topics like coordination, medical transportation, senior mobility and passengers with disabilities, to name a few. Many of us have taken advantage of CTAA's yearly EXPO for professional training at its best. By the way, the 2006 EXPO will be held June 3-9 in Orlando, FL. Mark your calendars! CTAA has an interesting magazine titled Community Transportation which is published every other month. There are articles about people in our own regions as well as the rest of the country, and articles pertaining to projects similar in size to those we operate. For example, In From the Cold about Wind River Transit Authority, Wind River, WY, Spring 2004; Sheltering Passengers which showcases SURTC's bus shelter design project conducted at NDSU, Fall 2004; and The Dispatch is about Lyn Hellegaard from Missoula, MT, telling her story about challenges and accomplishments, Summer 2004. You can find contact information for many of their staff, who have years of experience in transit, at www.ctaa.org/about/bios/index.asp to get assistance on issues you find particularly challenging. You can also get information on funding opportunities and applications for technical assistance grants. If you are looking for technical assistance, helpful articles featured in their publications, an informative website, or individuals at the other end of the phone to answer your transit questions, please consider joining CTAA today. CTAA...it's for all of us in Transit!
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