Earlier, Davis projected the coming year?s deficit at $127 million, but that grew to more than $135 million after calculating extra contributions to pension funds that the T is required to make to offset market losses.
The T?s proposal includes a number of small savings or revenue ideas that add up, including $4.8 million by eliminating more overtime requests, $2.2 million by restructuring station and equipment cleaning contracts, $1.1 million by switching buses to a low-sulfur diesel fuel, and about $5 million in new advertising.
But the biggest chunk would squeeze millions more from parking lots and garages. Last month the MBTA proposed securitizing revenue from most of its parking areas, in other words, selling to investors the long-term income associated with nearly 50,000 parking spaces, in exchange for a lump sum today. That might mean $300 million in one-time cash, which the T could use to pay off debt.
That, along with refinancing, could help reduce next year?s scheduled debt payments from about $450 million to $400 million.
That reduced debt figure accounts for about one-fourth of the T?s nearly $1.7 billion projected budget. About $550 million would be covered by fares and advertising; communities served by the T kick in more than $150 million, while a chunk of the state sales tax and additional legislative help accounts for more than $1 billion.
Davey has said the parking plan would let the T retain control of prices for commuters at the lots involved. Separately, the T wants to lease the North Station garage for $45 million a year. Davey said he supports that plan, even if it might drive prices higher, because the garage is used not by MBTA commuters but by motorists driving to TD Garden events or with business around North Station.
The T estimates that eliminating the Bill of Rights refund could save $600,000 annually. Since 2008, the T has approved an average of 69,546 yearly claims, the vast majority of them filed by riders of commuter rail, which provides roughly 10 percent of the MBTA?s 1.3 million daily trips.
The money instead could pay for Red, Orange, and Blue Line countdown signs, benefiting about 40 percent of the system?s riders, some of them commuter rail customers who are making the last leg of a commute to work or the first leg of a trip home, Davey said.
In other business, the board discussed an audit released last month by outgoing Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci?s office that criticized as too generous the T?s contract with the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co., the private consortium that is paid more than $250 million a year to operate commuter rail.
Board member Ferdinand Alvaro Jr., a corporate lawyer from Marblehead, said he wants the T to consider ending privatization of commuter rail when the contract expires in mid- 2013.
?It seems to me that we?ve kind of got the worst of both worlds here,?? Alvaro said. ?We?ve outsourced something which we arguably could have done ourselves and wound up spending a lot more money than if we?d done it ourselves.??
Davey said afterward that MBTA and Department of Transportation leaders are considering it ?as part of our due-diligence to think about the next generation contract for commuter rail.??
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at
emoskowitz@globe.com.
