The Region­al Trans­porta­tion District’s elect­ed board was reluc­tant Tues­day to endorse a slight­ly scaled-down pro­pos­al for lay­offs that still would tar­get near­ly 550 jobs.

As the metro Den­ver tran­sit agency faces a bit­ter pill of a bud­get pro­jec­tion that’s got­ten even worse, board mem­bers instead searched for alter­na­tives to reduce the tar­get fur­ther — most notably sup­port­ing the idea of salary cuts for man­age­ment employ­ees in high­er pay grades. Some also pitched a reduc­tion in hours for union work­ers to save jobs.

“The fact that we have to cut so many is very dis­tress­ing,” Direc­tor Judy Lubow said of the lay­offs tar­get. Offi­cials had reduced last week’s esti­mate that 635 union and admin­is­tra­tive employ­ees would lose their jobs as they refined the plan.

The Board of Direc­tors made no firm deci­sions dur­ing its pub­lic study ses­sion. But most of the 15 mem­bers found con­sen­sus around salary reduc­tions for high­er-earn­ing man­age­ment employ­ees — even beyond the cuts and fur­loughs pro­posed in RTD staff’s lat­est plan. That plan called for reduc­ing salaries by 2.5% for man­agers mak­ing more than $120,000, and by 5% for 14 top offi­cials who make more than $180,000.

But some board mem­bers weren’t will­ing to go as high as Direc­tor Natal­ie Menten, long a crit­ic of RTD’s top man­ag­er salaries. She pro­posed cuts rang­ing from 7% for those mak­ing at least $60,000 to as much as 18% for offi­cials mak­ing more than $180,000 a year.

RTD offi­cials said they would put togeth­er a revised pro­pos­al for salary cuts.

The pro­ject­ed 2021 bud­get short­fall, esti­mat­ed at $166 mil­lion in recent weeks, has grown to $215 mil­lion, accord­ing to chief finan­cial offi­cer Heather McKil­lop. That is due to updat­ed fare­box rev­enue pro­jec­tions and oth­er reck­on­ings — and she pre­dict­ed the pro­jec­tion would change again, poten­tial­ly for the bet­ter, when a new sales tax fore­cast comes in soon.

Besides lay­offs, a host of oth­er mea­sures are planned, includ­ing dip­ping deeply into reserves.

RTD is still grap­pling with a pan­dem­ic-induced falloff that has rid­er­ship down to 40% of nor­mal lev­els. The agency reduced ser­vice lev­els in the spring to 60% of normal.

In addi­tion to bud­get con­sid­er­a­tions, the agency is prepar­ing to pro­pose Jan­u­ary ser­vice changes next week that would fur­ther cut ser­vice on region­al com­muter routes that are see­ing lit­tle use dur­ing the work-from-home era — and boost it on high­er-demand urban routes.

RTD offi­cials’ lat­est lay­offs plan, now like­ly in for anoth­er adjust­ment, would affect 429 union-cov­ered bus and train oper­a­tors and oth­er oper­a­tional sup­port employ­ees, or about 20% of that cat­e­go­ry. Anoth­er 108 admin­is­tra­tive employ­ees, or 13%, would lose their jobs. Near­ly 300 vacant posi­tions would be eliminated.

“Again, we under­stand that the impact these actions have on people’s lives and we are attempt­ing to be sen­si­tive to that,” said Bruce Abel, RTD’s direc­tor of spe­cial projects, ear­ly in the meet­ing. “We also need to be sen­si­tive to the fis­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the orga­ni­za­tion. And we are going to try to min­i­mize the num­bers of peo­ple impacted.”

Sev­er­al board mem­bers voiced con­cern that the union was set to absorb a larg­er share of job cuts and called for a more equi­table distribution.

RTD gave notice of poten­tial lay­offs to employ­ees last week, but the deci­sion on how many is sub­ject to more debate.

Thw board is grap­pling now with a six-year finan­cial plan that’s espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to pin down dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Its mem­bers sup­port­ed short­en­ing the scope to two years and delay­ing the plan for a month or two. RTD’s actu­al 2021 bud­get is due to be pro­posed next month and adopt­ed in mid-November.