Finance Committee - 4/3/2019 Page 2
Alderwoman Kelly
Yeah so | was actually, | was trying to dig around a little bit and see is it typical for a municipality to send this
out to bid versus doing it themselves?
Ms. Marchant
So it’s a great question. There are many different ways that transit are operated. We are unique in that we
have a transit department; it is actually a City Department. There are many transit authorities; for example
Manchester is a separate transit authority, they are not part of the City. Up in the Dartmouth Region there is a
regional transit authority; in the Seacoast there’s a regional transit authority. So the way Nashua has set this
up is unique. My understanding is this was more of — the City owned the assets but we used to subcontract
out all of it; we didn’t have any City staff, we subcontracted the whole operations out, we just owned it.
We did a big analysis on that and what was the most cost-effective method for the City to run the operations
and | am not going to have this date right but 12 years ago, 14 years ago, we switched over. So we have a
City Department with the management and the operations team. We, the City Staff, have all the maintenance
contracts and we own all the assets. So the only thing that we sub out is the driver's and the management of
that and dispatch. So that has been a very cost-effective method for that as part of this. With the Federal
dollars we are required to do a cost analysis compared to other ways that people operate in the State and we
have found that we are still very, very effective in this method.
Alderwoman Kelly
You may not know the answer right now | was just wondering if when we did the analysis 12 years if we knew
how much it actually saved us, either percentage-wise or dollar-wise?
Ms. Marchant
| don’t Know off the top of my head, | don’t know that I’ve ever specifically seen that. | Know that our insurance
costs dropped $200,000.00 by bringing it under the City; that’s just one tiny piece of it. I’m sure that information
is out there and | am happy to look for it. | could share the cost-analysis that we did just recently for the FTA
comparing like services. It isn’t necessarily comparing only in New Hampshire; it is in the region to find
something that’s a little bit more like us and like contracted services and the hourly rates. That shows that we
are very, very competitive doing it this way; I’d be happy to provide that.
Alderwoman Kelly
Sure it sounds like it is what we’ve been doing, but | just want to know for my own education as we go so |’d
love to see that.
Alderman Laws
Director Marchant just took care of all the questions that | had.
Ms. Marchant
Excellent.
MOTION CARRIED
