The Perry City Council reacted Monday night at its regular biweekly meeting to the impending cuts to paratransit van rides announced Monday by the Heart of Iowa Regional Transportation Agency (HIRTA).
HIRTA announced that three towns in its region — Perry, Indianola and Knoxville — will see their service cut from four days a week to two days starting July 1 “due to no local funding.”
According to a statement released Monday by HIRTA, the “targeted service reductions are necessary to keep the agency financially stable and continue serving the region long term.” HIRTA’s income in 2025 was about $3.7 million, about $1.1 million less than its expenses. HIRTA Marketing and Communications Manager Danny Schnathorst said the 2026 deficit is also about $1 million.
The public transit service has operated in seven central Iowa counties — Boone, Dallas, Jasper, Madison, Marion, Story and Warren — since 1981, and county, state and federal sources have funded the agency over the years in addition to its contracts with nonprofits and fares from riders. Of the 87 cities in the region, nine currently provide funding: Ames, Boone, Grimes, Newton, Norwalk, Ogden, Pella, Waukee and Winterset.
Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson provided the city council Monday with data he compiled about the counties and cities in the HIRTA region. Peterson said he gathered the information in order “to get a better picture of what communities fund HIRTA and which do not and then what levels the seven counties that make up HIRTA under the original 28E agreement what their funding levels are like.”
Peterson noted that in Dallas County only Perry will see its service reduced, while Adel, for instance, with a population of about 7,000, will not suffer any service cut. Dallas County Supervisor Kim Chapman of Adel is the county’s representative on the HIRTA Board of Directors.
“Only nine of the 87 cities in their service territory provide funding,” Peterson told the council. “Out of those remaining 78 communities, it seems like three of those are bearing the brunt of service reductions. They seem to be the three largest communities after the ones that do provide funding.”
HIRTA Chief Operations Officer Brooke Ramsey said Tuesday the targeted service cuts were made to those cities with the highest ridership, which also makes them the costliest to service. They are also cities that contribute zero dollars to HIRTA. She said the agency recently requested a $2-per-capita contribution from the city of Perry, which would amount to about $16,000, but the request went unanswered.
“There is the potential to see the service discontinued altogether next year,” Ramsey said.
Peterson said he believes HIRTA’s budget troubles have been a decade in the making and stem from the state of Iowa’s privatization of its Medicaid administration in 2016.
“In that privatization, their reimbursement for Medicaid riders was cut back,” Peterson said, “so that left a large hole in their budget, which I think they’re still trying to manage. That’s when the conversation started happening with communities. Previous to that, it had always been county funding, and they receive state funding to get their federal funding. With city budgets the way they are — just in the last two years of our budget process, we’ve had to cut expenses and make cuts to departments, so we have a hard time finding room to add a new expense.”
Ramsey said she would gladly discuss these matters with the Perry City Hall and would appreciate an opportunity to present HIRTA’s position to the Perry City Council. HIRTA is also encouraging riders and other community members to advocate for public transportation funding by contacting local, state and federal elected officials. Information about advocacy efforts can be found on the HIRTA website.
The next regular meeting of the Perry City Council is Monday, June 15 at 6 p.m. in the Clarion Room of the Security Bank Building at 1102 Willis Ave. The next regular meeting of the HIRTA Board of Directors is Thursday, June 25 at 9 a.m. at the agency’s offices at 2824 104th St. in Urbandale.