On Tuesday, commissioners are expected to ratify a five-year, $219 million contract with Advanced Transportation Solutions LLC to provide paratransit services for thousands of elderly and disabled passengers.

Miami-Dade Transit and key county staffers originally budgeted $163.6 million for the Special Transportation Services (STS) program, so commissioners would have to take $55.4 million from the sales tax voters approved in November 2002 to fill the STS shortfall through 2010.

Critics are raising the "bait and switch" cry, arguing that county officials sold the tax to voters as a way of increasing mass transit, not paying to fix existing problems.

"Some hard facts have to be faced by advocates of all the rail transit lines promised by the People's Transportation Plan, including the North Corridor as well as Bay Link," said Frank Del Vecchio of Miami Beach. "The money isn't there. . . [and] the county administration and county commission continue to amend the People's Transportation Plan for non-rail items."

But several commissioners have said that disabled voters were crucial to the passage of the sales tax, so they are due the markedly improved service that is being promised in the new STS contract, said Carlos Bonzon, the county's surface transportation manager.

The county operatives who worked behind-the-scenes to pass the tax two years ago focused voters on all of the new services the half-penny could bring: dozens of new bus routes; hundreds of new buses reducing wait times on existing routes; new East-West and North Metrorail corridors; a light-rail streetcar linking downtown Miami and South Beach; and dozens of road and traffic signal improvements.

Very little mention was made of using tax proceeds to cover increasing costs of existing programs, including STS.

Paratransit shows up once in the fine print of a July 2002 accounting spreadsheet then-Transit Director Danny Alvarez presented to commissioners before they put the sales-tax on the ballot. It is mentioned again as an "eligible project" in the back of a voters resource guide.

WISH LIST

No money was set aside for paratransit in the community's 30-year wish list that was approved by voters -- Exhibit 1 to the People's Transportation Plan. Commissioners will amend the plan with Tuesday's vote.

The commission is changing the plan at the request of the Citizens Independent Transportation Trust, the group created by voters to watch over the county's spending of the transit tax.

The CITT has already ratified the $55.4 million expenditure for paratransit. But it is prodding Miami-Dade Transit to more vigilantly weed out people who no longer qualify for the STS program.

It also is pushing to make sure the contractor markedly improves its service to more than 13,000 people who rely on STS about 40 times a year to get to doctor's appointments, work and the grocery store.

When it ratified the STS contract, the CITT also passed a resolution recommending that any time commissioners want to amend the community's 30-year wish list, they have to provide a long-term financial analysis that will show which projects will be getting squeezed out. "We can't just keep adding things and adding things," said CITT Chairman Marc Buoniconti. "Everyone knows that if you put something in, and there's only so much money, something has to come out at the other end. They [commissioners] are going to have to come clean with the voters about this."

The Rev. Theodore Wilde, chairman of the CITT's Budget and Finance Committee, is hoping for more accountability.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Like transit critic Del Vecchio, Wilde fears that too many non-rail programs like STS that are draining funds at the front end of the People's Transportation Plan will mean that the money won't be available for all of the big-ticket rail projects promised voters.

Wilde has estimated the financial impact of adding the paratransit contract to the overall plan.

In Year Five of the proposed contract, $19 million in sales tax funds are being used to close the shortfall. Assuming a 5-percent increase over the next 25 years, the disability program alone would eat nearly $1 billion of the sales tax pie, his estimates show.

"It is a very big-ticket item," Wilde said. "That's why [the CITT] decided to approve the specific terms of the five-year contract rather than making a blanket addition to the overall plan. We want county leaders to realize that they need to address the increasing demands on the surtax before they come back to the CITT in five years for further funding of this addition to the People's Transportation Plan."

Commissioner Dennis Moss, whose term as chairman of the transportation committee will likely end on Tuesday, has heard the CITT's message loud and clear. Moss said commissioners are facing some very tough short-term decisions.

"There is a certain reality that sets in when you look at the resources that are available and all of the projects you want to have done," Moss said.

TOUGH DECISIONS

"We are going to need to sit down and have a very serious discussion, very soon, about where we're going with the tax."

Before the end of the year, transit officials and county administrators will release the annual update for sales tax collections and proposed spending over the next three decades.

Said CITT Chairman Buoniconti: "I think everyone is aware that we need to take a step back and try to re-analyze all of the projects that are going to be in the PTP and come to a realistic set of goals and then move forward with a one- and a three- and a five-year plan."