Georgetown

Two possible scenarios show the city’s designation becoming a small-urbanized area or becoming part of the Austin urbanized area.

“We are holding out hope for the small-urban [designation],” Georgetown Transportation Services Director Ed Polasek said. “If we are no longer rural and we go to some type of urban … we would lose [Capital Area Rural Transportation System] service, which means that people that get the door-to-door service—the Medicaid and Medicare on-demand service—would [lose that] because CARTS cannot provide that service in an urban area.”

The city currently provides CARTS, an on-demand bus service for cities with populations less than 50,000, with up to $10,000 in social services funding per year.

“For $10,000 a year, we are getting probably $500,000 to $600,000 of service for the city that CARTS is matching with the state and federal funds,” Polasek said.

If the city is labeled a small-urban area, the city could receive state and federal funding to create its own transit service; under the large-urban designation, federal funding would go to Capital Metro to be used at its discretion, and the state funding would no longer be available, he said.

“If we do find we are large-urban, we are going to be scrambling to talk to Capital Metro to find out what our options are, talk to Round Rock about their experiences and try to work it out so we potentially won’t have a gap in services,” Polasek said.

City staff could make a recommendation to City Council for a rural-urban district with CARTS, Polasek said. In that scenario, the city could contract with CARTS to provide potentially expanded services, be the recipient of state and federal funding, and handle the paperwork and accounting, he said.

“We wouldn’t have the staff to do it ourselves, so that’s the option we are looking at as the most viable for the city. CARTS still has to make the decision as to whether or not they want to do that,” Polasek said.

A potential business and operating plan could be presented to the Georgetown Transportation Advisory Board at its Feb. 10 meeting.

“They will make that designation in the spring, and at the end of the fiscal year, which is in October, the current service is gone,” Polasek said. “We’ve been talking about [a possible budget shortfall], and we know that there are going to be some tough decisions, but this is a program that is vitally important.”