Click to enlarge GARY SEWELL / HERALD DEMOCRAT TAPS leaders use a shredder on a paid off loan. They are, left to right, Brad Underwood, Cary Wacker from the city of Sherman, Jerry Elliot, Stan Barker and Gary Hollowell.

BY KATHY WILLIAMS

HERALD DEMOCRAT

SHERMAN -- Even routine motions carried a feisty and festive air at Texoma Area Paratransit System's Board of Directors meeting Friday. In a little more than a year of operations under new management and direction, TAPS has brought all its payables ($584,000 in the red in 2007) current -- and it paid in full a $350,000 promissory bank note.

Brad Underwood of Bonham, recently named executive director of TAPS, served as chairman of the board during the year of intensive work in which they and the management firm First United turned the non-profit public transit service around. During a break in the meeting, the board held a symbolic "note shredding" to celebrate the organization's accomplishment.

The board congratulated Underwood, as well as Charlene Parrish, finance director, and Becky Underwood, operations director, for accomplishing the financial turnaround so quickly and completely.

With the finances on the right track, the board turned to cleaning up some operational aspects.

The board elected Sherman City Councilor Cary Wacker as it chairman to replace Underwood. The board is composed of elected officials from the cities and counties TAPS serves.

Underwood said he had found $105,000 in federal grant money that had been set aside for capital expenditures and never spent. He showed the board slides of faded, incorrect and mismatched decals on buses and asked to outfit every bus with the current information and newest logo, for $4,950. The money originally had been set aside for a new in-bus computer system, but was inadequate for that. And, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, funded a computer dispatch and in-bus computer system as a "shovel ready" project.

The board agreed to use the old federal funds for a similar bus safety technology -- to put cameras and a digital recording system for them in each urban bus. The cost will be $50,400. TAPS will apply for a grant to put similar systems in each of its rural buses as well.

Underwood also showed pictures of the shabby furnishings and some potentially dangerous features of TAPS' offices on Texoma Parkway. The board also approved $49,750 for refurbishing the office.

Clay County Judge Kenneth Liggett seemed to sum up all the board's sentiment with his motion to approve the expenditures.

"This is a good idea," Liggett said. "Since I have been on this board, our only focus was on getting rid of the debt. Now we can start looking at these kinds of things."

The board decided to end its contract with a company that was supposed to handle advertising of third parties on bus exteriors. Underwood and Parrish said the company has not been fulfilling its contract, has ignored customers' legitimate complaints and failed to attract new advertisers or even contact potential ones. TAPS will bring the advertising in-house and will contract with sign companies to do the work.

The board took offense to the tone of a letter the contractor sent, and on a motion by Stan Barker of Bonham, decided to drop the contract immediately and not pay the penalty for early termination because of the failure of the company to comply with its part of the deal. Underwood will develop the terms of future advertising partnerships, defining the types of ads to allow, etc.

Among the other actions Friday, the board decided to:

• end its contract with Greyhound bus in Sherman and Gainesville as they are losing about $140,000 annually and is not used by TAPS riders, pending review of TAPS original federal grants;
•  sell eight surplus buses via Internet auction;
• learned that ridership, though down a little because of the end of the school year, is expected to hold steady because of transporting youth to summer activities;
• learned that 'Roo Route, Sherman's first fixed-route bus system, has been funded and will begin in late August.

Underwood said he is continuing to look at all contracts and past paperwork to provide even more financial stability for the organization so that it can provide more services.