Fuel costs put brakes on private use of Fairbanks city vehicles
Published Friday, September 5, 2008
Digg
delicious
Facebook
Mixx
Reddit
Stumble It!FAIRBANKS — With rising fuel costs taking a bigger bite out of the city budget, municipal employees can no longer use city vehicles for personal use without approval from the mayor, and not without reimbursing the city.
Whether it’s commuting to and from work or going out to lunch or grocery shopping, Fairbanks Mayor Terry Strle is cracking down on city vehicle use with a new city-wide policy that took effect Monday.
Some departments already had a vehicle-use policy, but Strle thought it was necessary to encompass them into a single plan.
“It was surprising to me that the city didn’t have one for liability or accountability reasons,” she said.
This is the first time in Fairbanks’ history that a vehicle use policy has been enacted.
The policy requires all employees to release their driving records and seek approval from the mayor or supervisors for vehicle use. It also requires employees to reimburse the city when commuting from outside city limits.
“While this was a significant change, it was a needed one,” Strle said in a memorandum to city department heads. “All of us need to be conscious that we operate with public funds, and we must continue to look for ways to be efficient.”
On average since 2005, city vehicles consumed a combined amount of 35,143 gallons of unleaded fuel each year, not including the police cars that fuel up at local retailers. At a market price of about $4.30 per gallon, the city is spending more than $151,000 in fuel alone.
During that same period, city vehicles requiring diesel fuel consumed an average of about 66,786 gallons each year. At a market price of about $4.80 per gallon, the city is spending $320,571.52 just to fuel the 130 pieces of construction equipment and fire trucks.
“The city expects to save roughly $20,000 a year with the policy,” according to Strle’s chief of staff, Pat Cole.
The new policy makes it clear that Public Works vehicles such as garbage trucks, dump trucks, front loaders, fire trucks and ambulances are “expressly prohibited” from being used for personal reasons. Though city officials couldn’t provide evidence of how many employees actually drove dump trucks or fire trucks home or out to lunch, Strle said that not having a policy was irresponsible to city residents.
“We certainly want to be good stewards of people’s money,” she said.
Under the new policy, fewer employees will have the chance to drive regular city vehicles as well. If employees use city vehicles for daily commuting then they are required to report it as a taxable income with the Internal Revenue Service.
Employees living outside city limits are permitted to use vehicles to commute, but only if they reimburse the city with a monthly payment based on a calculation of round-trip mileage and the IRS standard mileage rate for business miles driven.
That rate is about 50 cents per mile.
An employee who drives 20 miles round-trip and works about 230 days per year would pay about $193.58 per month to drive a city vehicle to and from work.
Because some police officers and the fire chief are required to be on-call 24 hours a day, their vehicles will still be used for daily commuting, if approved by the police chief.
“The ability to take squad cars home helps minimize response time,” said Police Chief Dan Hoffman. “Any additional on-the-road presence and proactive patrolling in neighborhoods is also a strong plus for the community,” Hoffman said.
City police are engaged in a juggling act with trying to tighten up their vehicle use without jeopardizing the city’s safety.
The city’s vehicle policy has forced the police department to limit eligibility for personnel who don’t belong to a tactical team or on-call squad.
Just a few months ago, the police department had to go before the City Council and ask for a budget increase to cover fuel costs. After requesting more money from the council, the fuel budget for the police department grew about 23 percent to $135,000 for 2008.
In 2007, the city projected that gas would cost $2.89 per gallon for unleaded fuel. But gas has been more than $3 a gallon since last November, which has caused a significant deficit in the operating budget for police.
“Given the nature of incidents we are required to respond to, as well as the proactive patrol measures we have to engage in, there’s a limited amount of activity we can curtail,” Hoffman said. “When fuel prices rise, we need to absorb those costs into our budget.”
“Our goal was to adopt a citywide policy that increases efficiency, reduces liability and provides uniform standards,” Cole said.
Community Discussion
Newsminer.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full user's agreement.
It seems to me that maybe the city employees other than police and some of the emergency workers should drive their own vehicles back and forth to their place of work. It is these little under the table type benifits that make those of us that work in the private sector and pay taxes just a little angry and want to cut more positions and the budget. That includes the Mayor if she is taking a city car home every day. I would rather see the dump and trash truck drivers able to stop at the nearest place to grab lunch in a city vehicle than drive them all the way back to the city yard and then back into the field after lunch. I am sure the Mayor is getting paid enough to drive her own vehicle to work and is not needed in an emergency anyway.
Good, good; now if only the boro would do the same. I think of that everytime I see a boro employee driving aimlessly around in a boro gas guzzler or employees doing their shopping in boro vehicles. Especially noticable are local volunteer firefighters and EMTs driving to town in boro crash trucks to run errands or to shop at Freddies.
Borough Gildy Borough!
I can't imagine but a very select few individuals that would ever need to be taking a work vehicle home. Going grocery shopping? Does the City have to many vehicles? Who's been minding the kitchen? What else is taken for granted?
Its about time. GVEA - are you listening?
"The ability to take squad cars home helps minimize response time,” said Police Chief Dan Hoffman. “Any additional on-the-road presence and proactive patrolling in neighborhoods is also a strong plus for the community,” Hoffman said."
This one's a real stretch. I guess that explains why I frequently see a FPD car in my area out in North Pole.
Irusuallyright- I totally agree with you. I see them, but don't see them doing anything. I also see the NP police doing nothing. Except sitting on the Richardson running radar or sleeping. NP needs to be in te NP areas, like around Badger and Hurst Rd.
I also see the troopers and FPD with their families in their cars. Why?
What about the government misuse of vehicles? At the movies? Shopping? What a waste of tax payer dollars. Yet the government does nothing about it. I have written letters, emails, talked etc and no response to any of it.
Maybe Dermot Cole can make a comment on the use of vehicles instead of bad mouthing our governor.
I'm confused, how come FPD asked for a fuel budget of $135,000 when the city spent $151,000 total? Is FPD really taking up that much of the fuel costs? Unless the FPD budget includes the money spent at "local retailers", and that amount wasn't part of the $151,000.
I also think it's strange that Fire/EMS vehicles are being included under the public works restrictions. How often does a dump truck need to respond to an emergency? It seems to me that since the fire fighters don't have the option of driving their personal vehicle while on duty there should be some sort of provision to allow them to leave the station and remain in the city limits.
That is even more true for the BOROUGH volunteer fire fighters Gildy. If there are only a couple people on duty they have to have a way to respond to emergencies. Just because you see a emergency vehicle driving around doesn't mean it's not on business.
What I would like to see at the borough level is some sort of policy on fire fighters who are assigned a borough vehicle all the time. I just learned from a friend that the fire department near where I live has 2 fire chiefs who have borough vehicles assigned to them 24/7 and that there is a 3rd vehicle used often assigned to someone who is on duty. One of the people assigned a vehicle all the time lives 20 or so miles away from the fire station, and that is just one way.
Is it really necessary to have that many people in charge on call all the time? I would think they could work something out that would allow them to use their vehicles more efficiently.
Once again the News Miner can't answer the simple questions of who, what, where, when and why and leaves its readers to speculate about what abuses are occurring and by whom. Most of us know (and understand why) the police and fire departments have leeway but who else is allowed to take vehicles home and use them for personal business? And why? Unless you're TRYING to incite the inflammatory comments that follow these articles, you might try covering some of the basic journalism principles so your readers don't have to fill in the blanks.
MarieBarr
Why do you feel that the firefighters need to go grocery shopping while they are on duty in a fire department vehicle? How about they act like the rest of us and plan ahead
Personal use of public vehicles should not be allowed as a rule rather than as a regular course of business. While at MUS, a few of the upper level supervisors regularly used MUS vehicles to go to and from work. The criteria was supposed to be that the demands of the job required that the vehicle use to save time and work for the benefit of the System. However many at the top level, Virgil Gillespie for one, did not drive a company car.
One aspect of the decision by some employees to NOT use a company vehicle was that the usage was supposed to be accounted for and taxed. I didn't use a company rig for driving to and from home until I had to work at the Wastewater Treatment Plant.
There are a some puzzling vehicle usage issues in Fairbanks (and other communities), and it deserves a look from time to time. Do employees really need to run personal errands using company vehicles and company time? And does the fire department really need to roll all of the rigs under certain circumstances?
On the flip side, if you are going from point A to Point B and you need to stop along the way (say Bank point C) isn't it more efficient to just stop and take care of it rather than go back to the work place and get your personal vehicle and take care of it? We had a lot of fun with that one, and you can again.
Pat Cole by now probably has is the best corporate knowledge of what want on before and he probably would agree that the solution to the problem is personal responsibility for one and taking a hard look at the actual usages for another. That is the measure we took at MUS to assess whether abuse was going on.
The City staff should get points for those taking advantage delivery services for lunches and so on rather that going out at lunchtime.
For the most part I don't think that Fairbanks City employees are wasting public money. My travels of late have shown far worse employee habits than you have at the City of Fairbanks. You should pay attention, but also realize that City employees know who they are, they are one of you.
If driving your own vehicle is good enough for our govenor it should be good enough for every city, borough, state and especily UAF, employee!!
If we could just get back to personal good judgement we would be just fine, but I guess that is asking too much. Then you add the UNION problem and it gets worse. The fireman driving a half million dollar rig to Safeway to do the daily shopping knows he doing the wrong thing, but can justify it by saying it is "training",, when it really is BS. Some city employees drive the city rigs home and put them in a warm garage, that alone saves the cost of pluging them in over night and cold starting them in the AM. If they live in the city limits, you are talking less than 5 miles to work. Those you see at the shopping malls on weekends, and at night, are the ones abusing the useage as intended. Driving a road grader from Hamilton Acres back to public works on Peger Road for coffee break, is not a wise use of fuel, yes this was a UNION mandate a few years ago, or at least how some interputed the rules. COMMON SENSE, where are you???
It is ridiculous that anyone would ever be using a state, city, borough, or university vehicle for private use. It never should have been allowed, but at least something is being done. Better late than never.
Common sense. Hah. If people could use it, we would have no need for government at all. ;)
Bugger,
You are wrong about the fire trucks at the super market.
The firemen need to stay near their trucks to respond to calls. If that means the truck is at Safeway for an hour it isn't a big deal. I would prefer to see the fire trucks out on the streets more often, not less often. They aren't being worn out with the relatively low usage they get.
I'm not sure what it is about the Fire Department, but folks just love to peck at them.
Maybe some of you should have applied for the job during the many years they were having a difficult time staffing the firehouses?
Moose: Just to clear up a few things I read in your response: I'm sorry if I misunderstood what you wrote.
Sure you see FPD vehicles around NP, there are about 5+ officers that live out here. You may not see them do anything because they are going home. Now, that being said if they were to drive past a person in the ditch (for example) they are required to stop and assist, even off the clock. They can loose their job for passing by and not assisting if it was reported. And for NPPD, I barely see them out in this area unless they are assisting the Troopers. Hurst/Plack and most of Badger are not in their area. I would love to see more active police presence in our area but that means Troopers not NPPD or FPD.
I've never seen an officer or trooper with a family member in their car, not saying it doesn't happen (though I don't think it's supposed to but I'm not sure what the policy is) however you might have seen the couple who lives out in NP, both husband and wife are Fairbanks police officers and I'm sure they car pool at times.
Now, to address the article. I'm sure there is abuse going on with city vehicles and I think it's great that the mayor is trying to cut back on spending in areas. I think it's tough because there will never be 100% satisfaction.
I also agree with Birdie about the guts of the article. It doesn't seem very well put together and choppy with the info provided. What else gets people excited? Seems to be police on most of the articles written in this paper.
Bugger, Let's blame unions for Everything! I like to blame them for weekends, healthcare, and workplace safety. Maybe we can can blame them for global warming and the extinction of the mammoth.
what a great idea! It shouldve been done YEARS ago, no matter the price of gas!
Does this mean we won't see the police cars lined up at the local fast food burger places, or are they checking on gang behavior while ordering their buggers.
hockeywatcher - I don't necessarily think that emergency vehicles should be used for grocery shopping, but I think there are legitimate errands that fire personnel need to run while on duty. I'm guessing the borough fire trucks are all serviced at the borough shop which is located in town, they may need to pick up/drop off equipment from other departments, the fire training center is also located off Lathrop, and I bet the stations don't clean themselves so they probably need some windex and dish soap now and again. All things that could result in an emergency vehicle driving around town while there isn't an emergency.
outraged, I think you're wrong here. I agree with MarieBarr that some errands may be legit, spending an hour at Safeway shopping for groceries doesn't fall in that category. That should be done before they go on duty.
If they live in NP, they should be using their own personal vehicles to go back and forth. I see the NP cops up and down the Rich on a regular basis, yet you can't get them to respond to your house if you live outside of North Pole city limits.
What about donuts? Are we buying the donuts? What is the donut policy? Bottled water? Coffee? Hmmmmmm.
Firefighters can often be on duty for up to 24 hours, this makes meal prep necessary, requiring a trip to............. You guessed it Safeway. Should they purchase groceries consumed by everyone at the station on their own time and dime? I don't think so but you might.
Hey Nicole, they should do like the rest of us do... PLAN AHEAD.
Heaven forbid you may see NP cops on the Rich. Keep in mind anytime they arrest anyone or have to take paperwork to the courthouse, it requires a trip to Fairbanks.
As far as the Mayors policy the article wasn't very clear. Everyone is being charged even the emergency workers who are on call. Fire inspectors and Tactical team members were given the option to pay or leave their cars. Many will surely opt to leave them. What will that cost the city in public safety. What will the cost be to plug these cars in outside all winter rather than sitting in someone's garage everynight. Any Alaskan knows that parking a car inside all winter saves a fortune in repair costs. The plan sounds good, but doesn't look at the big picture.
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.