Frank Wilson is gone at Metro, and others are following him out the door.
“A number of the senior appointees that Frank Wilson brought in are no longer here,” said George Greanias, Wilson’s successor, but he did not describe it as a purge. The positions of the five people who have left were abolished, and they were not offered other positions within the agency, Greanias said, saving the agency $500,000.
Greanias said he hopes that restructuring the organization, which he described as “a six-cylinder engine that was operating on two cylinders,” will help it do a better job providing customer service and building a better transit system.
CFO Louise Richman left Dec. 3. Other participants in the management exodus include Tom Hickey, associate vice president; Dick White, acting vice president of infrastructure and service development; Joanne Wright, chief of staff; and Rich Lobron, director of strategic technologies. George Smalley, vice president of communications and marketing, leaves at the end of the month.
“I think it’s very significant. This is what he (Greanias) knows how to do,” said board Chairman Gilbert Garcia. Greanias had been a business consultant. “He has come in and looked at the organization and has been willing to reshuffle the deck.”
Metro needed changes, and they’ve gotten them. Most of what has been happening over there has been positive, and I expect that to continue.
In other Metro news, they got some dough from the FTA; basically, they got reimbursed for work done with money fronted by Metro on the North and Southeast lines that would have been covered by the $900 million New Starts grant and was done before the funds were rescinded thanks to Frank Wilson’s Buy America shenanigans. The board is also considering changes to the Q card program, specifically bringing back day passes, which a lot of people have been requesting. Finally, I’ll have some Metro-related news to bring you next week, and no it has nothing to do with this.
I was in Houston at the end of October and had a good experience using the Metro. But I couldn’t read the pdf listing of QCard retailers found on the website on my phone. A Metro employee directed me to a nearby Valero, but they were out. A day pass that could be purchased on the bus or a paper transfer system would have been useful in my situation.
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