News

Any changes to how BAT services are delivered would not happen before January 1, 2028. The services offered will not change.

Benton Area Transit (BAT) is the County’s program. The County currently delivers our program services through a contract with Dial-A-Bus overseen by County staff. The resources to pay for these services are allocated to the County by the state and federal governments, to administer services in the manner determined by the County. 

Dial-A-Bus has other services and other contracts unrelated to Benton Area Transit. These must be maintained separately from BAT.

BAT is not going away. No matter how the Board of Commissioners chooses to proceed, BAT services will not be eliminated or reduced. There will be no disruption in service. In fact, the County hopes to be able to provide more rides for community members, which is one of the reasons we are investigating this change.

• Federal 5311 funds are allocated to agencies based on vehicle revenue miles, so the County needs to ensure stable or increasing miles to prevent funding decreases.
• Agencies like Benton County are under increased pressure from new, stricter federal and state regulations and have new requirements for financial and operational transparency.
• Repeated federal noncompliance findings related to both administrative controls and how services are delivered are affecting the County’s ability to secure grants.
• There has historically been insufficient data to provide accurate cost estimates for appropriate resource sharing. The County requires reliable financial data.
• An assessment by transportation consultant Kittelson & Associates found that BAT’s demand-response service delivers 1.29 rides per hour, compared to a peer agency average of 2.66 — a significant efficiency gap the County plans to address.

If Benton County switches to a self-perform model for BAT in 2028, here are the changes riders can expect:

• Drivers will be County employees rather than Dial-A-Bus paid or volunteer drivers. Passengers will notice some new faces with a different logo on their shirts.
• Some rides could be shuttle-type service rather than taxi-type, with more than one passenger going to the same destination or area.
• Drivers will adhere to the terms of service, which includes not entering clients’ homes. The terms of service will not change.

Dial-A-Bus is an independent nonprofit organization, and the County never has and never will control their operations. They have their own executive director and board of advisors. They have other contracts to provide other non-County services. DAB is also a tenant in the County’s Sunset Building on Research Way.

A change in the County’s contract with Dial-A-Bus for Benton Area Transit would not affect the organization’s other contracts and services.

County staff and leaders have been talking about Benton Area Transit service delivery for many years. When any big contract with a vendor comes up for renewal, the County is required to go through an RFP (request for proposals) process to ensure that we use vendors who bring the best balance of service, price and expertise. For BAT, this happens every five years, and the process involves the Board of Commissioners, Financial Services and Purchasing, and the Public Works department.

The County’s needs and the terms of the contract are updated with every RFP cycle. We talk about how to best provide BAT services utilizing the very small pool of vendors operating in this area and then make a choice. Until now, Dial-A-Bus has met enough of the requirements to become our contracted vendor. Now the County’s needs have changed to the point where Kittelson’s independent analysis determined the current vendor can’t meet them, and the last RFP produced no other applicants. Kittelson recommended drafting a plan to provide the services internally.

If the County does not continue a relationship with Dial-A-Bus, the only alternative being investigated at this time is a self-performance model where all BAT operations would be carried out by County staff.

There will be an increase in cost. In order to meet increasingly strict state and federal requirements, give more rides per hour, and provide stable services with room to grow along with demand, the County will have to pay the going rates. Our costs with the Dial-A-Bus contract have been artificially low, and other counties are paying more — according to the Kittelson report, significantly more than what the County has been paying. The County is adjusting in order to improve because our continued funding depends on it and our community members deserve it.

This is not accurate. Consultants from Kittelson reached out to Dial-A-Bus multiple times to request information for the assessment. They received very little useful information in return. There was no response to their requests for a meeting with the consultant.

The County responded to an earlier concern about incomplete information in the Kittelson analysis and has no reason to believe anything required for this stage of the project is missing.

In January 2026, the executive director and board of Dial-A-Bus contacted the county administrator and requested a meeting to follow up on the BAT presentation to the Board of Commissioners on December 2, 2025. They met with the county administrator and assistant county administrator and discussed four specific items they felt were missing or misrepresented in that presentation. The county administrators wrote a memo to the Board of Commissioners that provided information and explanation to clarify the four points.

Since the January meeting, no additional concerns about incomplete information have been raised through any channels with the Commissioners, County administration, staff or the consultants.

For Benton Area Transit, sustainability means always knowing the current status of operations and having a realistic plan for the future. It is a system that allows for a full understanding of known or predictable variables and confidence that resources and plans are in place to deal with the unexpected. This includes:

• The ability to quickly adapt to change and unexpected circumstances.
• Operating procedures with backups in place and clear contingency plans built in.
• Maintaining thorough and reliable financial data for transparent reporting and informed decision making.
• Operating with confidence that compliance measures are being met and service hours are maintained at the desired level so funding is not in jeopardy.

As an independent nonprofit organization, Dial-A-Bus manages their own staff. The County has no involvement in their hiring, staffing or any aspect of their workforce. Our contract outlines the County’s needs and expectations, and the board and executive director of Dial-A-Bus control how the contracted services are provided by that organization.

The March 2 STIF meeting was listed in advance on the Public Works Committee webpage as required. The meeting was not a public hearing and therefore was not noticed as a public hearing. The STIF Advisory Committee is not a quasi-judicial body and does not hold public hearings.

No extraordinary efforts were made to inform the public about the meeting because the County is not yet collecting public comment about the future operational model for BAT, and STIF meetings are not the correct venue for delivering that comment. STIFAC decides how STIF funds are allocated. The group has no authority to make operational decisions for County services and programs. BAT is one of the programs that receives STIF funding, and the matter was on the STIF meeting agenda on March 2 only as a short information update.

The County wants to hear feedback from the public at the appropriate time to act on it, and will schedule public listening sessions for this purpose in summer 2026. These public meetings will be advertised extensively.