Villaraigosa at the groundbreaking for the Orange Line extension in June. We know how Metro pays for construction, but what about the operations? Photo: SLH Photography/Flickr

Later this morning, the Metro Board of Directors will meet for the first time in the 2010 calendar year, and is faced with its biggest challenge since the passage of Measure R…a quarter of a billion operating deficit.  While some issues on the undercard are interesting, such as the Board finally moving to find a contractor to construct rail cars ten months after their quixotic quest to hand the contract to AnsaldoBreda kicked off; the largest issues is going to be what to do about the budget.  After years of shifting budgets and tapping contingency funds, Metro has to make some hard choices to make.

You can read the full Metro agenda here, and Streetsblog will provide more coverage of the meeting either later this afternoon or tomorrow, but in the meantime; the agenda spells out the economic assumptions that the Metro staff and Board are facing as they prepare the FY 2011 budget that begins on July 1, 2010.  This time, I won’t be live tweeting, but you can always follow the action as it happens at The Source, or the Gold Line Foothill Extension’s twitter feed.