Schools want bus shop veto overturned
The Greenville County School District is asking legislators to overturn Gov. Nikki Haley's veto of a plan to move a bus maintenance shop closer to where the buses are stationed.
Schools want bus shop veto overturned The Greenville County School District is asking legislators to overturn Gov. Nikki Haley's veto of a plan to move a bus maintenance shop closer to where the buses are stationed. Check out this story on greenvilleonline.com: http://grnol.co/1i1Vjlo
Ron Barnett, rbarnett@greenvillenews.com Published 2:23 p.m. ET June 16, 2014 | Updated 4:35 p.m. ET June 16, 2014
The maintenance shop is more than 10 miles away from where the closest buses are parked overnight, according to a school district spokesman.
In her veto message last week, Haley said the state Department of Education has abandoned the plan, set in motion in 2004, to build "a joint-use transportation and maintenance facility in Greenville County."
"Although the project was abandoned years ago, this proviso has remained on the books," the governor wrote. "The Department of Education has confirmed that this proviso no longer serves a purpose."
Oby Lyles, a spokesman for the school district, said if the Education Department has given up on the idea, the district hasn't.
The proviso Haley vetoed was to allow the state to sell property on Halton Road, where the bus shop is now located, and build a new one at the Donaldson Bus Center, where all the buses for that part of the county are based.
"It is both inefficient and ineffective for our buses to be parked at Donaldson Bus Center and maintained on Halton Road," Lyles said. "If a bus needs to be serviced, it has to be transported from Donaldson Center to Halton Road which is more than 10 miles away. Due to the age of our bus fleet, many of them have to be serviced."
Frequent breakdowns have been cited as a contributing factor to an increase in the number of late school buses running in Greenville County.
When the district built a new Donaldson bus center five years ago, it left space on the site to move the Halton Road maintenance center there, Lyles said. The Department of Education had signed a 50-year, $1-a-year lease on the property in 2010 for that purpose, he said.
After Superintendent Mick Zais was elected, the project stalled.
"It seems imprudent for the state to own such expensive property (on Halton Road) for this purpose, particularly when it is being used so inefficiently," Lyles said. "Again, we hope that with the proviso in place, the next (Department of Education) administration will be open to pursuing this idea to help save taxpayer dollars and improve our transportation system."
Zais is not seeking re-election, and runoffs will be held June 24 to pick nominees for the Republican and Democratic parties.
Lyles said the district has sent an email to members of the Greenville County legislative delegation urging them to push their colleagues to override Haley's veto.
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