By KALIN KROHE
Panhandle Post
The City of Chadron is seeing upgrades to Chadron Public Transportation with Julie Lawrence stepping into the supervisor position.
"That is a spot that we needed to have filled for some time," Chadron City Manager John Sutherland said. "The program has just been kind of self managing with oversight from the police department, interestingly enough, for a number of years. And over the course of the last few years, it's become apparent that there's a greater demand for the service than the system that we were using could handle. And so with the support of the state funding agencies and federal funding agencies, we've got more funding to do some expanded services. We needed to have a leadership person in that group that could take it forward and pursue those improvements to their success. We've added a staff person [Lawrence] who will be the supervisor for that group."
"This is a great group of people to work with at the city," Lawrence said. "Let the fun and challenges begin."
"We'll be able to move the operation out of the police department, free the 911 dispatchers up to do their critical emergency response services and take some of the distraction of the bus service out from under them," Sutherland said. "It will give us a chance to focus more attention on the transit system. And I can tell you, there's excitement amongst some users in the community for better and more expanded services. They like the service. They want to see it thrive. And so this is our opportunity to do that."