Metro News Release

For immediate release: June 23, 2003

112 Metro employees take the early retirement incentive program

Group represents 3,065 years of aggregate service to Metro

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Board of Directors has approved the resolution thanking 112 Metro employees for their years of service who took advantage of the Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP) that was announced earlier this year. The number of employees retiring represents 3,065 years of service collectively. Of this group, 50 employees have individually served Metro for 28 or more years, a number in excess of the Metrorail system’s age at 27. Even more, exactly nine employees match the same number of years that the Metrorail system is old.

It was the Department of Operations -- responsible for the day-to-day operation, maintenance, and upkeep of the Metrorail, Metrobus, and MetroAccess systems -- which had the greatest number of employees to sign up for the ERIP at 61 employees. They represent 1,744 years of service alone, which translates to a little more than 54 percent of the employees participating in the retirement program having nearly 57 percent of the total years of service.

" We are seeing a phenomenal number of collective years of service depart this system," noted Metro CEO Richard A. White. " Even one of our longest, continuously serving Board members, Cleatus Barnett, has retired. This region owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude for the immense commitment Mr. Barnett and the retiring men and women of Metro have provided for the leadership and operation of our world-class system over the years. It is because of their indefatigable work on behalf of the Authority that we have become known as " America’s Transit System." "

At 38 years each, two of the retiring employees hold the record in the most number of years served at Metro. Both are Department of Operations employees: Cleveland Daffin and Sherman Ramey. Mr. Ramey, General Superintendent for Bus Transportation, recalled that he arrived at Metro as a youngster, beginning as a bus operator at the Northern Bus Garage in Northwest Washington, D.C. Once he leaves Metro, transportation will figure in his retirement years as well. " I will travel a lot, something I have not had much opportunity to do. And when I" m not traveling, I will get in as much golfing as I can." To indicate how many years have gone by since he started at Metro, he noted, ’some of the kids I took to school on a Metrobus are now bus supervisors here at Metro."

Rose Remund " Assistant Secretary in the Office of the Secretary to the Board, a 35-year veteran of Metro, and an accomplished, award-winning quilt maker in her spare time -- recalls that she grew up at Metro, arriving in 1968 at the tender age of 21. She has served Metro through all of the general managers, including the first one for whom the Metro headquarters building is named " Jackson Graham. At the last Board of Directors meeting she attended yesterday, Harold Bartlett, Secretary to the Board and Chief of Staff, noted that she has attended 659 of the 1,270 Board meetings (including the one on June 19) that have occurred during her tenure.

" Metro has been good to me," she noted. " I even met my husband, Lou Miller, here." Her colleagues noted that Ms. Remund has been " good for Metro" and will be tremendously missed.

As Mr. Ramey and Ms. Remund were making their mark in their areas of expertise over the years, Phil Portlock, Manager of the Audio-Visual office, was there to take their pictures and pictures of the hundreds of thousands of scenes involving Metro people, places, and projects over the 28 years he has been at Metro. Someone estimated that if the rolls of film that Mr. Portlock has snapped over the years could be laid end-to-end, they would be enough to fill the lanes of several highways to the moon. He was there when the first five Metro stations were opened in March 1976 and when the last five stations were opened to mark the completion of the 103-mile system in January 2001. And he has visually recorded every major Metro milestone in between and since.

Metro offered the Early Retirement Incentive Program " as a means of reducing the number of non-represented employees and the Authority’s personnel costs in the fiscal year 2004 operating budget through voluntary retirements," stated the Board of Directors" resolution on the retirement program. It ended by saying that the " Board of Directors thanks the 112 employees for their long and dedicated service to WMATA and congratulates them on their retirements with best wishes for the future."

Metro will replace only one employee for every two employees who retired as a means of reducing the total workforce and containing costs during the current difficult budget cycle.

Number of Employees by Department/Office Who Took the ERIP

News release issued on June 23, 2003.