Clark County has brought in a fresh set of eyes to look at how it can spend less money on the 900 vehicles it uses for functions including law enforcement, infrastructure repair and maintenance, and on-the-job transportation for county employees.
On Wednesday, the county council and other officials met to discuss the scope of a study Clark County has commissioned on its fleet from Mercury Associates, a Rockville, Md.-based consulting firm. In December, the county entered a $79,620 contract with Mercury Associates that tasks the firm with reviewing policies and procedures governing how the county manages its fleet, including how efficiently it replaces vehicles and ensures they are appropriate for employees’ needs.
“We hope that will maximize county departments’ ability to do their mission and minimize cost to the taxpayer,” County Manager Mark McCauley said at the meeting.
McCauley noted that the county’s 2017-2018 budget directs over $23 million for maintenance and replacement costs for its vehicle fleet. The budget also seeks to reduce fleet costs by $1 million through identifying greater efficiencies.
The topic has been considered by county officials for over a decade, with four audits on the fleet since 2004. The issues identified by the audits include that the county has too many vehicles, particularly “rollovers” that are past their prime and cost more in maintenance. The reports also called attention to the use of take-home vehicles, the fleet’s overall low gas mileage and how replacements have been purchased without taking into account their full life-cycle cost.
Speaking at the work session, Tom Nosack, a county performance auditor, said that fleet managers have had to balance the competing interests of the county’s overriding objectives for the vehicles with the needs of employees.
“For quite a while, the county has lacked one half of that, so it’s been a very difficult environment to get change to occur,” he said.
McCauley said there needs to be a firm mechanism to prevent such “tussling” from happening. He noted how the county put a fleet management review board in place to scrutinize requests for new or replacement vehicles. But Nosack said that as new people were appointed to the board and relationships have remained “human,” it hasn’t been successful in fulfilling its original intent.
Paul Lauria, president of Mercury Associates, flew in for the meeting and to take an initial look at the county’s fleet.
“The county’s fleet looks pretty old,” Lauria said at the meeting. “I think there’s been a lot of deferred spending on replacement.”
Lauria said he suspected the county has cut back on spending for new vehicles, which has reduced its capital budget, but has generated more in maintenance costs. He said his company has already started work on the report, which will be complete and presented in three to four months.
Sheriff’s concerns
When the 2017-2018 county budget was being crafted, Sheriff Chuck Atkins expressed concern that it would include a reduction for his fleet. The sheriff’s office is the largest user of county vehicles. After the meeting, Atkins told The Columbian that his office uses about 170 vehicles including trucks, boats, vans, full-size Chevrolet Tahoes and Ford Explorers.
He said that four-wheel drive vehicles are a must for deputies, because they may have to respond to incidents in remote and rugged parts of the county. He said he was optimistic that the study would provide a more objective and systematic way of looking at the fleet.
“We are fully in support of this study because it’s really going to outline some policy changes and or clarifications,” he said.
