FEDS Calls U-Pass Referendum

This article originally appeared in Imprint, University of Waterloo’s official student newspaper
- March 9, 2007

by Michael L. Davenport

It was once said that the U-Pass issue wasn’t a question of if a referendum would be held, but when. Now it’s not a question of when you are going to vote, but how. The Federation of Students is holding a referendum at the end of the month, tentatively scheduled for March 28 and 29. Feds referendums typically have “yes” and “no” committees, each debating its side of the issue and raising public awareness of the referendum. Expect the campus to be carpet-bombed once again with posters in the near future.

 

ES councillor Drew Adams circulated a petition back in January, gathering approximately 2,500 signatures in two days. While the petition was never “officially” submitted (and thus the actual referendum question is different from that on the petition students signed), Adams met with Feds vice president administration and finance Renjie Butalid, as well as the Feds board of directors. Adams’ success in accumulating so many signatures in such a short span of time was enough to convince Feds to resume negotiations with Grand River Transit last January and work out the details of implementing a pass.

 

Adams is pleased with the result. “A lot of progress has been made since the issue was brought to council in January and I’m very pleased with where we stand now. The issue wasn’t how a referendum would come about but rather that there would be one this term. Ultimately, I think the system Feds has chosen to move forward with will be very beneficial to all students involved but what’s important is that students will finally have the chance to decide for themselves on the issue.”

 

Feds math councillor Eric Logan, who also sits on the Feds Board of Directors, commented on the progress: “The question on the petition was far less specific than what we have brought forward. In the past two months, the executive has been in extensive negotiations with Grand River Transit, to the point where we expect a signed letter of intent from GRT by week’s end, completely laying out what students can expect if they vote in favour of the bus pass. Indeed, this has allowed us to write a very specific and unambiguous question.”

 

The motion reads, “Do you support a Universal Bus Pass (U-Pass) at a cost of $41.08, plus an
administration cost of not more than $9.50, subject to increases due to inflation and student demand, to be paid by each full-time undergraduate student per academic term, scheduled for implementation in September 2007, and which will be reviewed in three years?” Most students following the issue expected a fee near the $40 mark, but to some the additional $9.50 “administration cost” comes as a surprise. It was also, in part, why Feds was concerned about Adams’ petition, as it made no mention of administrative fees.

 

Wilfrid Laurier’s bus pass is simple: students show their OneCard and they get on the bus — but that system would never work for UW. “The University of Waterloo, and I want to stress this, is very, very different compared to other schools…in the sense that we have a lot of different categories of students on campus,” Butalid said. He went on to explain that with co-op students, grad students and part-time students all holding a WatCard, our authentication process would have to be more complex than Laurier’s. “We’re still in the process for determining what the price point should be for that administration cost.”

 

“The reason we set [the referendum question] at $9.50 is because we thought that would be the maximum. It could potentially be lower,” said Butalid. The plan that students would actually pay in September has not been finalized.

 

Several ideas were considered for keeping track of which students had paid the fee in a given term, including mailing out stickers to be applied to WatCards or another piece of identification entirely. And though those options would seemingly be cheap (i.e. not requiring a $9.50 fee), in reality they are a logistic nightmare. Instead, the $9.50 will go towards equipping all busses with a WatCard swipe system.

 

“What that entails is a WatCard reader on every bus — we’re budgeting it for 210 busses, that’s the figure the region of Waterloo gave us. Every bus would have a WatCard reader system, and it would be connected online to a server at the Watcard office which has information from the registrar’s office, as to the [valid] student ID numbers,” Butalid said

 

It may seem elaborate, but seemingly cheaper systems would incur other costs. Butalid spoke of the chaos that would ensue asking 22,000 students to pick up a physical bus pass, or mailing out 22,000 bus passes by hand. “It would have to be done every term. It would be a very tedious task. And then we’d have to deal with the fallout of students not getting their bus pass, not getting it in a timely fashion, and complaining that they’d already paid for it.”

 

Butalid credited Bud Walker of UW’s office of business operations for swaying him in that direction. Walker made the case for technology, saying, “What you want to do is try and minimize the manual intervention to a system like that. The more things you can do in an automated or electronic fashion, the better. [...] We’d want to try and do as much electronically, because it has more integrity if you do that than manual systems, which are more prone to individual errors.”

 

Butalid also praised the other benefits to this system. “The simplest model would be to use modern technology. And I think Waterloo’s always been innovative in that aspect.” He pointed out that this technology would allow Feds to track ridership and see where service improvements work best.

 

Neither Walker nor Butalid thought the September deadline was an impossible challenge, as much of the infrastructure for the GPS WatCard reader system is already in place. Consider that it is currently possible to charge a Waterloo Taxi to one’s WatCard.

 

Not only will undergraduates be voting on a referendum, but graduate students will be holding their own bus pass referendum concurrently with the Feds referendum. Ian McKinnon sits on the board of directors for the Graduate Students Association and has been taking care of the U-Pass issue from his position. Said McKinnon, “What happened during all the negotiations is GSA sat in on them, [and] GRT said we can hop on board with whatever decision Feds makes.” He went on to explain that it made sense for the GSA referendum to piggyback on the notoriety the Feds referendum was sure to get, and be on board for the bus pass from day one rather than try to get in on the action later.

 

However, the GSA referendum question reads, “Do you support a universal bus pass for full-time graduate students with a non-refundable cost of not more than $48.60 per term subject to inflation, provided there are significant transit service increases and there is a review of the fee in three years?” The strange case is that the “transit service increases” is dependant on the success of the undergraduate referendum; there are 22,000 undergraduate students but only 3,000 graduate students.

 

If the undergraduate referendum question is voted down there will likely not be a bus pass for graduate students, no matter how their referendum vote goes. Three thousand do not have the same bargaining power as 22,000 or 25,000, and will likely not be able to get the services increases on their own.

 

Butalid commented, “If the referendum fails, I will only have one more month in office, so what I will do is highly recommend to the next Feds executive, is to look at the possibility of a refundable bus pass. Or not even refundable, but an opt-in bus pass.” We already have those opt-in passes for $148 for three months, but Butalid holds out hope that we could get a better deal. It seems that no matter the outcome of this referendum, the U-Pass will be a persistent issue on campus in the coming year.