CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority committee recommended today postponing for at least a year a $.25 fare hike long scheduled to take effect in August.

The RTA board is scheduled to consider the postponement and a revised budget at a public meeting at 9 a.m. March 27 at the agency's headquarters, 1240 W. Sixth St.

The hike would have been RTA's fifth since 2006. Instead, RTA will review fares overall, especially for poor riders.

After a passionate public presentation to the board of a "Fair Fares" proposal by the advocacy group Clevelanders for Public Transit, the Operational Planning and Infrastructure Committee voted to hold a private session to discuss labor negotiations and related matters. The committee emerged 39 minutes later and publicly recommended the delay.

Earlier, Clevelanders for Public Transit opposed the hike and also service cuts scheduled to begin March 11. The report called them part of a "death spiral" that led to a record low of 39.5 million riders last year.

The advocates also asked the struggling RTA to seek more tax support.

"We need to resurrect RTA before we get left behind as a viable city," the group's Lynn Solomon said at the RTA board's monthly meeting.

After the committee's recommendation, Joe Calabrese, RTA's CEO and general manager, said, "We need to take a look at the possibility of modifying our fare structure to best assure fairness and equity to our customers. It's critical that we study if there is a way to join with community partners to offer lower fares for our customers with lower incomes."

A previous hike of 25 cents in 2016 was followed by a six percent drop in riders, double the predicted loss. Around the country, transit ridership is falling, apparently because of low gas prices, telecommuting and transportation services like Uber and Lyft.

RTA has announced pending cuts in service and staff to cope with the recent loss by Ohio counties and transit authorities of sales taxes on Medicaid payments for managed care. RTA is losing about $20.2 million per year and getting just one-time transitional aid of $28 million from the state.

Clevelanders for Public Transit called today for standardized e-fares throughout Northeast Ohio. It called for easier, cheaper transfers and all-day passes. It called for decriminalizing fare evasion, letting police focus on safety instead and creating unarmed civilian "ambassadors."

After the presentation, organizer Ashkai Singh said he'd rather create an RTA property tax for RTA than raise the agency's current share of sales taxes collected in Cuyahoga. Those are already Ohio's highest at 8 percent, including 1 percent for RTA.

George Dixon, RTA's long-time chairman, told the audience, "We feel the pain, and we want to work with you. We're going to get through this some kind of way."

In December, an advisory Cuyahoga County Council committee issued a report on public transit late raising the possibilities of excise fees and tax hikes. That group has since been folded into what became a council committee on operations, intergovernmental relations and public transportation. Transit is on the agenda of the body's April 3 meeting.

Opposition has already surfaced to any transit tax. A Facebook post calls for a meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 21, at Denny's, 4331 W. 150th St. by groups called the Cleveland Conservative Network and Liberate Ohio. The post opposes all local tax hikes.

Since 2002, yearly state support for transit operations has fallen from $45.6 million to less than $7 million. Calabrese said Ohio now spends about one-hundredth per person of what neighboring states like Pennsylvania spend on those operations. He said transit leaders will try to promote transit to candidates for state office this year.

Last year, Medicaid stopped paying sales taxes for managed care in the few states like Ohio that didn't tax private insurers' payments too. The state persuaded Medicaid to pay a franchise fee instead, but only enough to cover the state's share of the old tax, not counties' or transit authorities' shares.

In another financial matter, RTA's board approved today a three-year contract with the Fraternal Order of Police, backdated to March 1, 2017. The contract calls for no raises except in years of rising sales tax and fare receipts, when raises could rise incrementally to 3 percent.

Last fall, in a ruling under appeal, a Cleveland municipal judge banned transit police from spot-checking riders' tickets on board the Healthline buses, which link downtown and University Circle. Since then, said Calabrese, total Healthline ridership has fallen sharply but paid ridership risen.