Mayor Andre Dickens appeared at the MARTA Board of Directors meeting on March 13 to reject the findings of a new spending audit and to announce he was pulling his support for the streetcar extension to the Atlanta Beltline Eastside Trail.
The new audit of the More MARTA capital fund program claims the transit agency only owes $865,630 rather than the $70 million figure in last year’s audit from the City of Atlanta.
The city claimed last year that MARTA overshot its operational budget by $70 million for expansion projects funded by a city sales tax. The city hired accounting firm Mauldin & Jenkins to conduct the audit.
However, the new assessment by KPMG said MARTA only owes the More MARTA capital fund $865,630 as of June 30, 2022.
Dickens rejected the findings of the KPMG report while admitting the city had only had the document in hand for 36 hours.
“What KPMG did was not an audit. It was a review of the allocation process for More MARTA,” Dickens said. “I know it, KPMG knows it, and so does this administration of MARTA. So I reject the financial conclusion in this report and stand by the findings of the original audit.”
Dickens called the “so-called audit” a “slap in the face” to Atlanta taxpayers who are providing the funding through the sales tax. He urged the board to work with the city and stakeholders to resolve differences and move forward.
Dickens also denied that the city was holding up permits to begin work on the renovations of the Five Points Station. He said the permitting process was not connected to the audit issue.
“We are not holding up permits for the Five Points Station project,” Dickens said. “We want this project to move forward and start ASAP. Anyone who has told you that we are holding up any permits is simply lying to you.”
The city’s Chief Operating Officer, LaChandra Burks, said the demolition permit to remove the canopy at the Five Points Station, which is the first phase of the renovation plan, was issued on Thursday.
Dickens also walked back his support for extending the Downtown streetcar to the Eastside Trail and instead voiced support for an extension to the southern portion of the Beltline trail and the transit-oriented development planned for Murphy Crossing.
It was also hinted that the streetcar could be extended west to the Atlanta University Center complex.
Last year, Dickens announced his support for new MARTA infill stations including Murphy Crossing, Krog Street/Hulsey Yard between King Memorial and Inman Park/Reynoldstown, Joseph E. Boone between Ashby and Bankhead, and Armour Yards in Buckhead between Arts Center and Lindbergh.
“I’m a fan of light rail, I always have been, it’s been my interest in it since the very beginning,” Dickens said. “The hope is that one day rail can be put on the Beltline. The short term look at this is: How do we start this process?”
Dickens said he believed the future of the Beltline is going to be multimodal with both light rail and other forms of transit.
Advocacy organization Better Atlanta Transit, which has been an opponent of extending the streetcar to the Eastside Trail, called Dickens’ announcement a “courageous decision.”
“Congratulations to Mayor Dickens for making the wise and courageous decision to defund the expensive, unnecessary and inequitable Streetcar Extension East,” Better Atlanta Transit President Walte Brown said in the statement. “It’s clear that the $3 billion Beltline rail loop would do nothing to address Atlanta’s actual transit needs and that it would detract from the enormous success of the Beltline.”
“The Streetcar Extension would have gobbled up hundreds of millions of precious More MARTA dollars for a rail stub serving primarily wealthy Eastside neighborhoods,” Brown continued. “That money will be better spent on transit TO the Beltline, such as the mayor’s proposed infill stations, and on transit that serves ridership demand in less well-healed neighborhoods, such as the Hollowell Parkway-North Avenue bus rapid transit line.”
