Hot off the presses — or the Intarweb — comes this look at how CATS spends it money. Bottomline: Poorly.
Question: Would repealing the half-cent sales tax mean Charlotte would have to hike property taxes to run a bus system? Answer: Absolutely not.
Were CATS to merely get its operating costs down to what they were back in 1998, adjusted for inflation of course, ask system users to pay what they paid back in 1998, and get a little more money from city — say, less than $10 million, or roughly twice what the city is giving to Bank of America for development around a transit station — then Charlotte could still have the same bus ridership it had in 2005 (17.8 million) for much less cost.
No wonder CATS does not like the public asking questions about how it spends its money.
