The CEO Report with Jameson Auten for February 2026

Presenter: ‘The CEO Report’ as presented Feb. 18 by LTD Chief Executive Officer Jameson Auten:

Jameson Auten (LTD, CEO): I’m going to start off by introducing you to our employee of the month, I’m going to invite Eric Evers to introduce Jordan May.

Eric Evers: How’s everybody doing? (Good.) Good. This gives me great pleasure to introduce Jordan May as LTD’s February employee of the month. I’ll just say a few words. He’s brought some notes too, so he said, ‘Don’t steal my thunder. Keep it short.’

Jordan’s been here over 18 years now. He’s been a full-time instructor, our lone full-time instructor for over three years. You know, he started as a general service worker, then became a fleet mechanic, a journey-level mechanic and for three years he has been our instructor, he’s turned what has kind of been an up-and-down training program into what I would consider a top-notch, maybe even a world-class training program.

And we continue to get better, right? We’ve gone from, you know, kind of intermittent training in a few months and kicking guys out on the floor to nine months training, and through the iterations over the three years this year will be a 14-month training program, currently three mechanics in that, will complete somewhere in July.

He’s also stood up and instructs a CDL pre-trip training that all of our new operators go through. That’s boosted CDL testing scores too.

I mean, he’s everywhere. He is on our Safety Committee, really elevates the level of what the Safety Committee finds and talks about, not just in Fleet, but across the district.

I’ll stop talking and give it over to Jordan. This is so well deserved. What you bring to the table, to the team, the district, and to the community, just can’t be matched. So appreciate everything.

Presenter: Employee of the month, Jordan May:

Jordan May: Thank you. I am honored to be recognized. So I’ve actually worked at LTD since I was 19 years old, and I’m very proud of the service we provide to our community. I’ve worked my way through the different positions in the Fleet department, and I’ve honestly enjoyed every single one of them.

Like Eric said, I started as a general service worker, kind of worked my way through the ranks, and I truly enjoy it, and I think it is really helpful to have that experience in those different positions to help train the new and upcoming Fleet team members.

I take great pride in training, mentoring, and working alongside our team of operators and bus maintainers. We onboarded nine new employees in Fleet last year, a record for my time at LTD. So, we’ve never onboarded that many people, even close. So it was usually just a couple over the last few years. But nine is a record.

This training could not have been accomplished without the help of the entire Fleet team, all 51 of us. Our team is made up of equipment detail technicians, general service workers, a tire specialist, mechanics, inventory technicians, instructors, leads, supervisors, an admin assistant, planner, manager, and director.

I’m confident with the team we are building, we can troubleshoot and solve any challenges that come our way. Thank you.

Presenter: CEO Jameson Auten:

Jameson Auten (LTD, CEO): Moving into the monthly Operations performance update, just like to call out a couple things that probably look familiar to you by now: 

In terms of ridership, fixed-route and EmX up 4.1% from December of the previous year (EmX 1.4% and fixed-route 6.1%). However, the rolling 12-month projections still show the decline that we’ve been seeing—about 2.2% on fixed-route and 7.7% on EmX.

At the same time, we’re seeing higher fares and passes, so we’re studying to see what that means. One thing that we suspect is associated with that is we’ve done over 4,000 fare checks along EmX each month. So we’ve been doing a good job of having a presence along EmX.

The challenge with EmX and fare is that it has characteristics of a rail system, except it doesn’t have the person driving and the person walking the train, checking the tickets. So we do that randomized for our public safety.

And so we have a team that’s looking for correlations on what that actually means and how that’s impacting it. At the same time, we’re going to be going into our long range … study, which we’ll look at the entire system and look at where our ridership is. So stay tuned for that.

On the other side with Mobility Services we’re seeing a 2.6% increase on the rolling average. So that service tends to continue to increase. You’ll recall in our board-approved goals for this year, we are doing an analysis of that service to make sure that it’s operating well from an efficiency standpoint. I think that’s due in third quarter of this year.

The other piece I’d like to point out relates to absenteeism. We were having high levels of absenteeism the past few years. As we begin to add people to our rolls, we’re seeing that come down a bit. So it’s decreased year over year from just over 18% to about 16.5% and continues to get better in that area.

Moving into the monthly department reports, I’m going to invite Wendi Frisbie and Mike Hursh to give some highlights of their specific areas.

Presenter: With an update on HR and Marketing, Chief Administrative Officer Wendy Frisbie:

Wendi Frisbie: Wendi Frisbie, the chief administrative officer here at LTD.

For the year of 2025, we hired 57 new employees; 29 of those were bus operators, which we learned was quite a bit of a class that we have to do. Eight Fleet workers. We talked about with Jordan; six public safety and of the 57, the 47 that we did bring on, they were ATU employees, so unionized employees. Ten of those were admin and we also rehired seven former employees that came back. Four of those were actually operators. We love to see those returning employees coming back. 

Internally, we also had 16 promotions and 10 transfers during the year. So quite a bit of movement within the departments. These numbers are really kind of showing some internal growth opportunities. It’s very intentional. You know, onboarding, new experiences, retention—and so really it is about like that recruitment and retention and like how do we help get our employees to that next level and opening up a lot more pathways for people… 

For the department: HR worked with Finance to work on our pension and so we were able to decrease our vesting schedule. And so we’re now down to a three-year, which is a great recruitment tool. And then also increase our contribution up to 13%. So now we are in line with a lot of other industries, which is really great.

We also worked with our insurance carriers for a budget-neutral process of a pilot for the GLP-1 medications just to help with our health insurances there. So that’s a pilot we’re going to have for this next year and we’ll see how that goes.

For Marketing, a very, very busy month for them, always is December but this year they focused on updating the rider’s guide. We updated service changes that were coming up in February. So a lot of their month was spent doing that.

We had some community events. They have what’s called ‘Sounds of the Season’ where we had outreach. They met with approximately 240 community members and that had an outreach with them.

We’ll get a bigger report in March, but we also had the student bus pass program that they’re really working to expand. We have a new employee that was a former operator is now working with us, and so they’ve been doing a lot of public awareness around that program and so we’ll be getting some more numbers for that next month.

Really exciting trends seeing there and really overall, they just really work to balance the brighter communication with brand development, community engagement, and just cost-effective performance for our marketing team. So it’s a great team. 

Presenter: With an update on the handoff at RideSource, Deputy CEO Mike Hursh:

Mike Hursh (LTD, deputy CEO): Mike Hursh, deputy CEO. I know we all have been somewhat trepidatious about the transitions in the coordinated care organization on our RideSource. Happy to report that that has happened with a seamless experience for the passengers. We’re now gone from two CCOs to everything under Trillium, and as of Feb. 1, it’s working smooth. We will be watching very closely as the billing comes in and we make sure we’re fully reimbursed for all the trips the CCOs cover.

On the big bus side of the house: As has been reported, we’re very excited to have eight new bus operators in their nine-week training program. As of this morning, they’re all progressing well. This is our first officially registered apprentice for the state of Oregon, so we’re excited to have them in class and have our apprenticeship, program off and running well.

We had an internal promotion. Jason Cain was promoted to public safety supervisor. Always like to see internal promotion and internal career growth opportunity with that.

The public service officer team is now at 22 with plans to hire two more. As Jameson reported, over 4,000 inspections last month for fare compliance. And in addition to that, we need to be aware of the incredible community service they provide with lost and found answering customer questions, customer services, not just checking for fares, but really a whole package for the community.

Partnership with the facilities team, the Fleet crane and fall protection in Bay 1 is well underway. That’s a safety addition and crane addition to our Fleet facilities for fall protection.

The equipment from the contractor arrived a month ahead of schedule. Over the next several months, construction work will continue with the new equipment expected to be operating this spring. I know Jordan May, that we just recognized, will be excited to launch training on that construction as it’s completed.

And finally, I think this is our last meeting if we stay on schedule with boardroom improvements. Significant progress was made in December and January with successful completion of the rough-in for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. And if you walked by today, you saw that the furniture’s in place and taking shape, that project’s on schedule and on budget.

Presenter: And to close out this edition of The CEO Report, the delegated authority report:

Jameson Auten (LTD, CEO): In front of you in your packet is the delegated authority report, on the spreadsheet there.

Presenter: Among the items listed: Two task orders for Chambers Construction totaling over half a million dollars, and the city and LTD extend their lease agreement on 310 Garfield by another four months.