Walworth County transportation staff on July 7 asked committee members for input on 2026 budget priorities and outlined a near‑term plan to study intercounty connections rather than to request immediate budget increases for expanded hours.

Mark Liberta and other county staff said they are preparing the county administrator’s 2026 budget and suggested the committee wait to recommend expanded weekday or Saturday hours until after the rebranding and marketing effort is complete and its ridership effects are known. Staff proposed prioritizing an evaluation of cross‑county connections on specific corridors (for example, along Highway 50 to Kenosha’s fixed‑route stop) and studying potential connections to Rock County/Janesville and Whitewater, including Gateway Technical College campuses.

Committee members asked staff to include Gateway campuses and several committee members specifically suggested evaluating Rock County and Janesville connections. Staff said an intercounty evaluation would likely be a developmental project for 2026 and not a firm budget ask at this time.

On funding and projections, county finance staff presented draft grant and budget numbers based on the state application. The packet showed gross shared‑ride expenditures of $2,000,399 for 2025; staff said federal Section 5311 funding would cover roughly 46.6% and the Wisconsin 85.20 specialized transit grant about 7.4% for a combined 54.02% of eligible expenditures. The county share funded by tax levy was shown as $938,443 in the draft materials; staff said these application and budget numbers are not final and may be updated before the November–December state application deadline.

County financial staff explained why they had not budgeted a more optimistic ridership revenue figure: the state grant application locks in the program revenue assumptions used to compute the grant match and awarding a higher projected revenue can reduce grant funding. A county staff member, Raul, summarized the rationale: “if we were to budget a higher revenue expecting that our marketing plan is going to work, the state is gonna lock us into that amount.”

Staff also described the county’s contracted service hour capacity as a buffer the county maintains to handle ridership growth without immediately returning to the County Board for more funds. Materials in the packet list contracted service hours (about 46,563) and a buffer of roughly 6,400 hours (about 13.7% of the contracted hours), which staff said provides room for growth if ridership increases after marketing.

Next steps: staff will continue to refine ridership and revenue projections before the state application is finalized, complete an evaluation of intercounty connection feasibility in late 2025 or 2026, and return to the committee with more detailed budget figures during the statutory budget presentation timeline beginning in September.