The high-profile decision to end the RTD strike rests with 1,750 members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, who vote today on an amended pact.
If workers approve the measure, it should get formal approval from the Regional Transportation District board of directors Saturday morning.
But it will not be a mere parrot of management’s bargaining position by an uninvolved board, said RTD director Barbara Yamrick, who represents parts of Aurora and Centennial.
“We are not a rubber-stamp board, and I’m not a rubber- stamp person; if anything, I’m a loose cannon,” said Yamrick, a fifth-grade Denver Public Schools teacher who was elected in November 2004.
Yamrick is not alone in her independence. Director Bill McMullen backed striking workers at their rally Wednesday even as he told them RTD’s final offer was fair.
The 15-member board is a diverse lot that clearly isn’t in it for the money. At a salary of $250 a month, plus modest travel and expense money, their work is glorified volunteerism. Members attend as many as five meetings a week.
Yet directors have ultimate authority over RTD’s $393 million annual operating and administrative budget and they will oversee spending of a whopping $4.9 billion on the FasTracks transit expansion plan over the next 11 years.
Tuesday night, directors vigorously debated whether to submit the contested union contract to binding arbitration, which McMullen promoted. The board rejected that option.
They also discussed whether to spend $1 million on security guards during the strike, before approving a $500,000 tab.
In reviewing RTD’s strike options, the board agreed that the agency should not exceed its three-year, $15.3 million contract offer to workers, directors say.
Yet they also tasked RTD general manager Cal Marsella with a challenge, according to Yamrick. “We said, ‘We want the workers happy, and we want them back to work.”‘
“He went and did his job,” she said of Marsella’s negotiations with the union that produced the latest offer.
RTD director Lee Kemp said he and fellow board members agreed Tuesday not to increase the money in the offer – while possibly moving some elements around – in part as a message to local communities that they won’t be able to manipulate the FasTracks budget.
The 51-year-old Kemp brings a unique perspective to the board. He was an RTD bus mechanic from 1976 to 1985 and walked the picket line during the 1982 strike against RTD, which lasted about a month.
“We got a lousy $50 a week (in strike pay),” Kemp recalled Thursday. Kemp joined RTD’s maintenance management from 1985 to 1991. He now is general manager for a heavy-equipment service company in Commerce City.
Summing up the board’s diversity, Yamrick said, “We’ve got a cross-section of the area, from bleeding hearts to staunch patriots. But we all respect each other.”
Director Dave Ruchman, a lawyer who represents portions of Lakewood, Golden and Wheat Ridge on the board, puts it another way: “This is a really interesting-looking machine, and it works really well.”
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
