Riders of Butler Transit Authority buses may have to pay an extra 25 cents for single rides come July, but they have a chance to submit comments before the base fare increase is put into effect.

The Butler Transit Authority board voted at a meeting Tuesday, April 23, to accept a proposal to increase the base fare starting in July from $1.25 to $1.50. As part of the proposal, all local bus pass prices will remain the same, and fares for the commuter will also remain unchanged.

John Paul, executive director of the authority, said this would be the first increase since 2012, when the authority also increased the fare by 25 cents. According to Paul, the authority has a policy in place to only increase the fare by increments of 25 cents, so riders don’t have to carry any smaller change.

The fare increase, Paul said, is being proposed to offset costs relating to inflation. He also said the transit authority has been mulling a fare increase since at least last year, but administrators waited because of the lingering economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re not raising the multi-trip passes, we’re only raising the base fare,” Paul said. “All the other rates stay the same; it’s only the base fare.

“We were OK when inflation was 1%, 2% a year, but now, not so much.”

Written comments can be submitted to the transit authority until 4:30 p.m. June 10. People can mail comments to 130 Hollywood Drive, Suite 101 Butler, PA 16001, email to info@butlertransit.com or submit comments in person at a transit authority board meeting or at the terminal at 128 W. New Castle St. in Butler. There will also be a public hearing at 1 p.m. May 9 at the transit authority’s administrative building.

The transit authority administrators took the fare increase into account when drafting its 2024-25 budget proposal, which the board also approved Tuesday. The proposed budget totals $3.3 million in expenses, about one-third of which are for utilities, according to Tiffany Fosnaught, finance manager for the transit authority.

The board voted Tuesday to opt into three-year contracts for electricity and natural gas. The cost for the electricity provider, IGS Energy, is up more than 44%, according to the agreed upon contract, and the cost for Peoples Gas is up 15%.

“We’re locked into that rate for three years; that’s a constant rate,” Fosnaught said. “These figures I used in our budget, just because — we only had one — we still had to vote on it.”

The transit authority is also paying for gas use for which it was undercharged for more than 10 years, but the authority only has to pay back seven years of the cost, which still increased the gas line item for the authority.

“We had no basis or history for the (clean natural gas) usage,” said Rebecca Black, solicitor for the transit authority. “Peoples had given us the wrong numbers.”

Following an executive session, the transit authority board voted to give raises of up to 7% to the 12 employees of the agency.