Central Oregon’s public transit agency will kick off a discussion this week on how to pay for bus service in the future.

Cascades East Transit has been on a bumpy financial ride in the last year. The agency eliminated door-to-door bus service in many rural areas in fall 2012 after it lost some of its federal, state and other grant funding. The city of Bend planned to stop its $1 million annual payments to the agency in the summer of 2015, but city officials have said that might not be enough time for Cascades East Transit to adopt a new funding model.

Andrew Spreadborough, interim executive director of the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, said the new transit funding committee that will meet this week is supposed to expedite the process. The Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council operates Cascades East Transit, and the COIC board has begun to discuss funding options over the last year.

“I think we just recognize we need to focus their work, so we formed a smaller committee that will be putting a little more time and effort into recommendations that will go to the full board in the fall,” Spreadborough said. “We have a lot of the primary research done, so it’s a matter of working through the options and coming up with recommendations.”

The first meeting of the transit funding subcommittee is Wednesday afternoon. Potential funding options range from keeping the current model of local city and county government contributions to asking voters to approve a new payroll or property tax. Cascades East Transit has not proposed any specific funding sources, but these options were listed in a recent presentation to the board on how other Oregon transit agencies raise money. The committee will also discuss whether to maintain the current regional bus system or switch to a different model, Spreadborough said. If the committee suggests a tax to support transit services, it must decide whether to seek approval on a regional level or by individual cities and counties.

Bend City Councilor Victor Chudowsky is a member of the COIC board and the funding subcommittee.

“The idea is to do an overall assessment of this whole system and see if there is a way to put it on more sound footing,” Chudowsky said Monday.

“My own personal take on it is since we handed the bus system over from the city to COIC, they’ve been doing a really good job running it. … For what (Bend gets) for the $1 million, it’s a bargain. We were spending more than that when we ran it.”

Previously, bus fares covered approximately 11 percent of the cost of the bus system. Since the city handed the system over to COIC, the portion of costs covered by fares rose to 19 percent, much closer to the norm in many public transit systems, Chudowsky said.

However, Cascades East Transit still needs a more reliable funding model, Chudowsky said. At the same time the service lost some of its state funding, gas prices and personnel costs increased.

Public transit is important to Central Oregonians who lack other reliable transportation because many must travel to Bend for work, medical care or other reasons, said Deschutes County Commissioner Alan Unger, who lives in Redmond. Unger is also a member of the COIC board and the transit funding subcommittee.

“A lot of things happen in the Bend area that we all need access to, so it’s important to the region that we have a functioning transit system,” Unger said.

Some of the funding strategies that pay for transit services in the Willamette Valley would be difficult to achieve in Central Oregon, Unger said. “There’s not the industry to pay for an employment-type tax, and we don’t have a sales tax,” Unger said. That could drive local officials toward a property tax, Unger said.

If you go

Cascades East Transit Funding Committee

When: 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Penhollow Room, Deschutes County offices, 1300 N.W. Wall St, Bend.

Other cities

How other communities in Oregon pay for transit:

Property tax measures: Hood River, Tillamook, Klamath Falls

Payroll tax measures: Eugene, Salem

Transit fee charged on utility bills: Corvallis

Local sales tax: Ashland

Source: Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council