IN YOUR CORNER

 

On Saturday, March 23, 2002 the MCTA will be holding their 52nd annual

dinner meeting at the Lost Lake Country Club in Hobe Sound.  Martin

County Administrator, Russ Blackburn, and Martin County Superintendent,

Dr. Sara Wilcox, will discuss their upcoming budget constraints and

opportunities as well as plans to deal with the projected funding

shortfalls.  This meeting is always entertaining and informative, so

please join us.  Reservation forms can be printed from our website and

mailed to the office.  The cost is $25 per person.

 

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Our local Government has separate fleets of vehicles which are

maintained by the Sheriff, the School District, the Constitutional

Offices, and the Martin County Commission.  The following comments

pertain only to the Martin County Commission’s fleet of light vehicles

that are in their replacement program.  These are primarily sedans,

vans, and small pickup trucks  as opposed to heavy equipment like fire

trucks, etc.  The county government maintains a fleet of 170 such

vehicles, assigning seven to a pool and the balance to specific jobs

within the various departments.  The total asset value for this fleet is

approximately $3,000,000.

 

The assignment of these vehicles may require further scrutiny.  Roughly

half of these light fleet vehicles are under-utilized.  By definition,

this means that they are driven on average less than 600 miles per

month.  Several vehicles logged as little as 2,000 to 3,000 miles total

in the year 2000.

 

Each new vehicle requested must be justified by the requisitioning

department, and it must be approved by the County Administrator as a

part of the budget process.  It must be justified again at an annual

review if found to be under-utilized.  By corporate standards, most of

the justifications are subjective and unconvincing.  There are quite a

few references to vehicles not being in service for a year, and there

appears to be no set policy for reassigning vehicles which are

consistently under-utilized, although we are told that this has been

done.  This makes scrutiny of the county's system even more important.

 

Most of the vehicles we are mentioning are stored at the county

facility, but some are driven home evenings by their assignees to allow

a swift response by emergency or maintenance personnel.  There is no

available data regarding the number of times these vehicles have been

summoned to action after working hours, so we can neither validate nor

refute this need.  Certain identified emergency vehicles can be driven

for personal use without incurring IRS tax implications, so take-home

vehicles become an unreported benefit for applicable Emergency Services

personnel.

 

At the county fueling depot, a Gas Boy system employing two cards, one

for the employee and one for the vehicle, allows management oversight of

fuel consumption and vehicle use, by employee, by vehicle.  We were told

that a similar system is used in St. Lucie County where an encoding

device plus inputted information results in a management report that

reveals fuel usage in a report format that highlights variances with the

norm.  Cost control should be most effective when a single fuel source

is utilized or multiple sources are tied into a single information

reporting system.  Unfortunately, that is not always the case here where

some of our vehicles refuel at multiple sources, some with sophisticated

monitoring devices, others with only a padlock guarding the tank.  It

begs the question, is all fuel going into county vehicles?

 

The county utilizes 87 octane fuel at the Stuart depot, and 89 octane at

the Indiantown depot in deference to the Sheriff who requests high

test.  There is a 10% cost penalty when stocking with premium fuel,

enough money to ask the Sheriff to take a second look.

 

The quality, cost and model of the typical vehicle purchased by the

General Services is fairly utilitarian or "bare bones".  However, some

requests have veered from the standard.  One director budgeted a

$35,000, 4-wheel drive luxury SUV to facilitate the occasional celebrity

tour of his facility, which sometimes strays off the paved surface.

Another has a van for the purpose of the occasional trip to

Gainesville.  Another, a van to transport informational materials to

local school programs.

 

Top management in the county, consisting of the County Administrator,

Assistant(s), and the County Attorney, each receives a car allowance.

 

The current average age of the light vehicle fleet is 5.5 years as

compared to six years in Indian River and seven at St. Lucie County.

Approximately $400,000 is budgeted annually to fund the purchase of 20

new vehicles.  Martin County follows guidelines set by the State Dept.

of Transportation which call for an 8-year, 80,000-mile useful life for

these vehicles.  Those being disposed of are sold at auction recovering

an average of $2,200 per vehicle.

 

Vehicle maintenance is performed at separate facilities:  one for the

Sheriff Department, one for the Emergency Services Department, and one

for General Services, which is the rest of county government.  The

Taxpayers Association has consistently recommended a sensible

consolidation of this work into one facility where maintenance costs can

benefit from the economy of scale without sacrificing the priority

requirements of the individual departments.

 

As with any function, private or public, the operation of the county's

Light Fleet is only as good as its procedures, controls, and the people

administering them.  Some departments seem "vehicle heavy".  There

appears to be some gaps in fuel accountability.  Justifications for new

vehicles or retention of under-utilized ones should be re-examined, as

should the merits of reducing the fleet size while increasing the

relative size of the pool versus assigned vehicles.  Finally,

justification for those vehicles taken home at night should warrant

another look.  Assistant County Administrator Fokkers was reviewing

these matters prior to leaving, and we hope that a member of management

will pick up where he left off.