BART’s board of directors elected new leadership at its regular meeting last week and welcomed four new members.
Mark Foley was selected as the board’s next president, while Melisa Hernandez was chosen as vice president. Both votes by the nine-member board were unanimous.
Foley replaces former board president Bevan Dufty, who did not seek reelection to the board. Foley served as vice president for the past two years and previously served as the board’s president in 2021.
The changes come as BART is staring down a fiscal cliff in coming years that will balloon to $385 million dollars in fiscal year 2027-28, according to the agency.
The board is looking at a number of long-term funding options, including a potential tax measure that would go before voters in November 2026.
Foley represents District 2, which includes portions of Contra Costa County, including the cities of Antioch, Pittsburg and Brentwood. He was first elected in 2018 and was reelected in 2022.
Foley noted the financial challenges ahead in comments to his colleagues after their vote.
He also welcomed new board members Matt Rinn, representing district 1, in southwest Contra Costa County, Barnali Ghosh, elected to represent district 3, which includes downtown Berkeley, district 7 representative Victor Flores, representing parts of Oakland, and district 9 representative Edward Wright, whose district includes downtown San Francisco, to their first meeting since being elected in November to four-year terms.
Foley said he was looking forward to seeing how the perspective and energy of the new directors would help the board navigate the future and the fiscal uncertainty, which is being caused by a steep decline in ridership after the pandemic and a loss of state and federal emergency funds that have kept the agency afloat at current service levels.
“I look at 2025 as a year for us to invest in ourselves. We need to let the public know how valuable BART is to their lives,” Foley said after being elected.
“We need to let folks know that we’re an option that is on time, that is reliable, that is clean, that you can take your family,” he said.
Hernandez, a former city councilmember and mayor of Dublin, was first appointed to the board of directors to represent district 5 in March following the resignation of John McPartland. She was elected to a full term in November to the district, which includes the city of Hayward and portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
Hernandez thanked other directors in short comments after her election as vice president, saying she was looking forward to getting things done and doing some team building with new board members in the coming year.
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