The AC Transit board of directors approved a resolution Wednesday to reduce bus service, acknowledging public agitation surrounding further service reductions but emphasizing its inflexibility in the face of a projected $56 million budget shortfall.

No dissenting votes were cast as six board members voted in favor of the resolution, while Director Joel Young abstained. The board members said they sympathized with public outcry against the agency’s further service cuts but argued the service reductions were necessary.

“I did support it, but it’s incredibly difficult for me,” said board president Ryan “Rocky” Fernandez in an interview after the meeting. “I got on this board after having a class pass at Cal and because I wanted to get more people riding buses, not using cars, and this is certainly a step back from that.”

Transit agency officials estimate the service reductions will save the agency $9.5 million annually. The reductions will go into effect this August, pending a review that will assess whether the changes violate civil rights code by impacting one community more than another, Fernandez said.

The resolution, which approves a 7.2 percent reduction in service agency-wide, focuses primarily on reducing the frequency of bus stops and altering the hours of certain bus lines instead of eliminating or truncating lines.

The 51B will stop every 10 minutes instead of every eight minutes during morning peak hours in addition to other changes in frequency for early hours, midday hours and evening peak hours.

“We’re trying to preserve as much as we can, make the improvements where we can and hopefully we’re going to come out of this a lot stronger and … we will be able to increase service down the road and make it a lot better,” Fernandez said.

Previously, transit officials proposed an 8.4 percent reduction in service – as opposed to the 7.2 percent in the revised plan – to save the agency $11.4 million. But transit officials revised the extent of service reductions after receiving fervent public opposition at two public hearings last week and conducting further analysis of the effects of the reductions.

Still, several community members from across Alameda and Contra Costa counties who attended the meeting opposed the idea that further service reductions were the best option for riders.

“What they’re doing now is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Anthony Rodgers, an AC Transit bus driver of 20 years and political coordinator for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, which represents the agency’s bus drivers. “The ship is sinking, and somebody should have figured out a way to fill the hole in the boat before we got here.”

Others sympathized with the board’s position, stating that the board had exhausted all possible options in resolving its dismal financial situation. Several board members said pressuring higher bodies of authority – including the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the California government and the federal government – is the only method of combating the shortfall.

In response to community opposition to the cuts, board members voted five to two in favor of amending the resolution to include a non-binding statement of the board’s intent to freeze further service reductions for the next two years.

“I think that everybody thinks that we’ll just keep cutting services, that we need to,” said Director Greg Harper at the meeting. “We need to indicate to them that that’s not the case; we’re gonna stop, we have to stop now.”