Almost an hour passed after his classes ended Friday afternoon, and Ken Haberland, a first-year student at Santa Fe College, sat at the bus stop waiting to go home. When he boarded the bus, he had a 45-minute ride ahead of him.
SFC’s student government is still working to make riding the bus less of a hassle. Tuesday will kick off this semester’s collection of signatures for the Start the Bus! initiative, said Guadalupe Lawrence, the spokeswoman for for initiative.
Start the Bus! is led by the Santa Fe Student Government and would make it possible to include a bus fee in tuition to provide unlimited, more reliable bus service for SFC students. The fee would be capped at $3.50 per credit hour and would allow students to ride buses for free.
A push is being made once again to gather support for the newly modified initiative before it will be brought to Tallahassee sometime in the next few months.
The student government will gather signatures at the Sweets for our Sweets event Tuesday as members pass out doughnuts and Valentine’s Day candies, Lawrence said.
Lawrence said they got more than 2,000 signatures last fall.
The initiative presented last year would have affected all junior colleges in Florida. It was vetoed because the inclusion of a bus fee in tuition wouldn’t necessarily benefit all of Florida’s junior colleges, Lawrence said.
This year, the initiative is designed to be optional, allowing schools to choose whether they want to include a bus fee with tuition.
If the initiative is passed, a Transportation Fee Committee would need to be formed to organize routes and sched ules in coordination with where SFC students live.
But not all students are sure they would want this initiative to pass. Haberland said he would likely not support the initiative because he would have to pay more money if it passed. However, he also said that he would like to have better bus service.
