The City Commission will have the final say on whether an I-Ride bus stop and shelter stay in downtown Mt. Pleasant.
Downtown Development Director Michelle Sponseller had proposed removing the shelter, but the idea quickly turned controversial.
It is located on Broadway Street, near Main Street and Mercantile Bank.
The downtown TIFA/Principal Shopping District Board approved the plan in October. The white striping at the bus stop would have been replaced with parallel parking places.
City Manager Nancy Ridley said Monday that the issue is being returned to the board, which meets this week. The board will make a recommendation to the City Commission.
The City Commission, in turn, is expected to discuss and decide the issue at its next meeting, March 26.
“As I looked into it, it became unclear who really had the authority to make the decision,” to remove the shelter, Ridley said. “So since there is no clarity to it, I’ve recommended that we let the City Commission make the final decision. At the end of the day, they ultimately are the overriding body.”
The city received a letter from the Isabella County Transportation Commission urging the city to keep the shelter and bus stop. Ridley said two other residents also sent letters, wanting it to stay.
ICTC Executive Director Rick Collins spoke at public comment during Monday’s City Commission meeting. He urged commissioners to keep the bus stop and shelter in place.
“The real problem is the breakdown in communication between the entities of this county and the services in which this city and this county provide, and our officials won’t have enough information, and our city staff won’t have enough information, to make educated decisions,” he said.
“For the record, I gave the downtown development director in September of last year, the number of (approximately) 3,800 passengers that went to the bus shelter downtown. The question that was posed to me directly was ‘Did we plan to initiate a route?’ My response in September of last year, was ‘No, we don’t, but we do transport 3,800 people a year to and from that shelter,’ so I sure hope that the TIFA board had that information when they made their vote.”
Collins said that in 2017, ICTC carried about 300,000 passengers total in the city. “About 130,000 of those passengers came from areas outside the city of Mt. Pleasant. So we brought 130,000 people from outside the city into the city, to do shopping, to conduct business, to eat, to go hospitals, to provide economic benefits to this city. We are a viable resource; we are needed in this town. I urge you to reconsider your decision, but also question as to why the TIFA board and the Principal Shopping District had authority on this matter.”
His comments drew applause from the audience.
Sponseller said in February that she seldom saw people using the bus stop and that I-Ride users could still be dropped off or picked up outside of specific businesses, which she thought would be easier than going to the shelter.
In his letter, Collins provided statistics on I-Ride drop-offs and pick-ups in the downtown. The service picked up or dropped off passengers a total of 31,281 times in the Central Business District in 2017.
The most popular sites were Riverview Apartments (8,367 total), Veterans Memorial Library (5,427 total), the downtown bus stop/shelter (3,639 total), the Isabella County Courthouse (1,249 total) and Island Park (2,922 total).
