Jill Schramm/MDN Joe Cutaiar, foreman in the Minot city transit program, and Mark Jantzer, acting mayor, in the wheelchair, demonstrate the wheelchair lift on a Souris Basin Transportation bus Thursday. Present are city council members and city staff.

Existing door-to-door transit services could continue through 2026 in Minot under a financing plan introduced by city transit supervisors Thursday.

Public Works Operations Director Bryan Banfill and Transit Superintendent Brian Horinka updated some city council members at a meeting Thursday on the status of transit services as the city prepares to move to a new federal funding classification. The change from rural to urban funding will provide the city with dollars directly from the federal government rather than as pass-through from the state.

Currently, the city contracts with Souris Basin Transportation to provide paratransit. SBT operates paratransit in conjunction with a demand-response service largely funded using federal dollars for rural transit systems. Minot won’t be eligible for services funded by federal rural dollars after July 1.

Horinka said the cost of continuing the same services is much higher without the federal rural money, but a solution may lie in access to federal rural funds received at the state level during the pandemic but not yet spent, along with new state dollars appropriated by the 2025 Legislature.

SBT has indicated its cost to continue its existing demand-response services through this year is about $107,000. Demand-response provides door-to-door service for the general public. The city’s access to banked federal dollars at the state level can be used to cover that contract with SBT, Horinka said.

The city expects a direct federal allocation of $3.2 million over the next two years, and Horinka said the city can budget $600,000 of that amount for paratransit for the next year and a half, with the 20% local share coming from the new state money. Minot can expect about $302,000 during 2025-2027 from the legislation, Horinka said.

Paratransit is paired with a fixed route system to provide service to individuals who are unable to use a fixed route, due to a mental or physical disability. Horinka explained the city needs to provide paratransit to anyone within three-quarters of a mile of any route during the same hours as the fixed route system.

“So, for the paratransit side, from now until the end of next year, minimum, it will not cost the city anything additional. We will get that money from federal grants and from state money to match those federal grants,” he said. “That puts us in a really good position over this next year and half, where we’re still kind of feeling out this para project and seeing what it’s going to cost us moving forward.”

Horinka added SBT has new software that can provide more data, so the city is requiring in a proposed contract that SBT provide numbers of rides, revenue hours and other information to the city. Getting that data will put the city in a better position to plan for the future of its transit system beyond 2026, he said.

“We’ve had a really good system over the years,” Horinka said. “Between Souris Basin and the City of Minot, we’ve worked very well together. We’ve provided a great service to the community. Zero complaints basically over the last 15 years about how this has operated and what the people got from us. And now, unfortunately, due to these new rules and regulations, there’s been a little bit of a monkey wrench thrown into that, and now we’ve got to try to find a way to still provide that service for these people that are used to having it.”

The city and SBT sought to maintain the demand-response service, which meets the needs of low-income individuals and other residents who may not qualify as having a disability. Under the regulations, individuals must apply for disability certification to use paratransit. It isn’t currently required because paratransit and demand-response are operated jointly and funded with federal rural dollars.

Horinka said the city has received about 150 applications for certification.

“We’ve denied five applications to this point, and most of those five, if not all of them, were denied because they either did not properly fill the forms out and give us the information we need to make a determination or they refused to give us the release to reach out to their (medical) provider to get a confirmation,” Horinka said.

Banfill added the city is looking at an interim certification. If an applicant doesn’t get a ruling on certification within 21 days of application submission, the person would be considered certified until the city can complete the review process to make a final determination.