Travis County Commssioners Court
May 13, 2003
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Item 7
Christian smith is here, he believes that he can cover number 7 in 10 minutes or less. 7 a 7. A. Review list of under-utilized vehicles that traveled less than 6,000 miles in the last twelve months; and. B. Review draft letter from Commissioners court to elected and appointed officials with under-utilized vehicles, and take appropriate action.
>> my colleagues are not here because of other obligations, otherwise they were here all this morning to provide any answers to any questions that you might have. I will do my best in the interest of time. The discussion of the fleet, has been one that has been with us for some time. The judge has provided some strong leadership in expressing his opinion about the -- about the size of the fleet, the utilization of the fleet on the -- along with others, that's still a review of -- of vehicles that might be classified as underutilized. For purposes of this analysis that was defined as a vehicle that goes less than 6,000 miles, a -- the fleet management division of t.n.r. Has a way of calculating miles because when you use your gas card, miles just [indiscernible], they have provided a list of underutilized vehicles by department by function. There's 139 vehicles travelling less than 6,000 miles. Of those 79 travel less than 3,000 miles. Of those 27 travel less than 1,000 miles in the course of the last 12 months so that led various folk that looked at that data to suggest that perhaps we could take some steps through the budget process to increase the -- the efficiency utilization of the vehicles. In discussions with the planning and budget subcommittee both the judge and Commissioner Gomez suggested that questions be posted -- be posed to the department so that before anything is done an increased understanding of how these vehicles are used can be obtained. So -- so rather than have a series of questions also posed by say either the executive manager of t.n.r. With responsibility for the fleet management or the planning and budget office, perhaps it would be better to have that letter come out from the court top elected and appointed officials who have the responsibility for these vehicles. 75% of those 139 vehicles are located in six departments. Sheriff's office got 45, t.n.r. Has got 34, health and human services gotten and the d.a. Has six and juvenile court and facilities have got five each. A series of questions were posed, where is it parked, how frequently used, how many others used similarly, why traveled so few miles, how many vehicles do you really need. If that vehicle weren't there could you reimburse employees for the use of a vehicle. If there was a central pool of vehicles, could you release any vehicles? What if they were -- if this one was replaced with an older one. If you could redeploy the fleet that you have, could you reduce the number of underutilized vehicles and if so, how? And it's a lot of questions. But they appeared to be reasonable to test that reasonableness we shared the draft of the letter with the vehicle users committee. There's 22 on that vehicle users committee, asked them for comments, gave them a week to review it. One comment was received which was looks good. There was no other comment by any others and the individuals were advised that if there were no comments then we would assume they are con occurring. So -- concurring. So that's what you have before you. You have draft letter, if you approve itronix will be provided to you for signature, we will take steps to distribute it to the officials and we would be asking them for a response by June 9th. That is in sufficient time hopefully to review before the preliminary budget is filed.
>> christian, could you double check on item no. 7 in your letter. It says that the current mileage reimbursement rate is 36.5. I think it changed again in January, down to 36 again. Basically whatever the i.r.s. Rate is, but just double check with the auditor's office, but I do believe it's back to 36. It changes all the time. Also on the last sentence, before you hit the thank you very much, looks like you have a split on the word --
>> typo there for you to find.
>> I found it.
>> thank you.
>> you're welcome.
>> I have to use the degree -- I have a degree in this stuff, I have to find it. My mother gets very, very proud of me when I use my degree.
>> spelled your name right, e before I except after t.
>> except neighbor, weigh and Sonleitner.
>> before t. [laughter]
>> any more questions or comments?
>> that was it.
>> I don't know if this is worth commenting on, I thought this was real entertaining to look at and to -- to see gather some information on this. I mean, you know, along with what you were talking about for some of the statistics, christian, I did find two third were between 8 and 10 years old, 29 auto goes over 100,000 miles. And then this you total the total miles of these 139 vehicles it was around right at 400,000, if you were to pay people 36 cents -- 36.5 cents per mile, you would come out with about $140 that you would have paid out versus what we probably got lined up here with the number of vehicles and it's pretty obvious that we have got a lot more vehicles than what we need. Although I don't know what happens, where's the graveyard of automobiles? I mean, obviously we are not getting rid of cars that we have got if they are 8 to 12 years old, my biggest question that I had was what does it cost maintenance-wise to keep this fleet.
>> that's my question.
>> that's the thing that's probably going to be the most staggering to us. If you want to take half the fleet and sell these cars for $10,000, you know, generate half, $600,000 and take the -- take the cost of what it operated, you would still have some pretty substantial dollars. I think that we are moving in a direction here that's going to be pretty eye opening to some people. I really look forward to hearing some responses back. I thought the questions were good. Is mike joyce the one that could tell us -- basically, I mean, here's what each -- here's the maintenance whatever for each one of these cars, this is what we really anticipate? Because I think that's really where we are going to be surprised.
>> yes. There's going to have to be a financial model developed that allows decent and consistent criteria across the board. But then there's also the business case. There may be solid business reasons why some of these are underutilized, a paddy wagon, for example, there's some other ones that perhaps are not so obvious. So there's going to be a blending of programmatic need and business justification with a financial model that incorporates not just repairs and naints but -- but the fuel, comparison to -- to a reimbursement as well as the capital costs. These vehicles were $25,000 each. So, you know, if you multiply 139 vehicles times $25,000 you get a big number. That's not to say all of these 139 --
>> they are not worth 25 anymore.
>> they are not worth 25. But we invested 20 to get them.
>> that's true.
>> so the big question for me is if you -- I don't know that we really utilize the pool strategy as much as we should.
>> uh-huh.
>> if you have six employees and they are entitled to -- they have to have access to a vehicle part of the time, then do we need six vehicles or three vehicles? Questions like that.
>> yeah.
>> > should make us more efficient. These are old cars. You know. And probably a little salvage value. But they are taking up a parking space, big headache. When they do break down, I guess, we repair them try to return them to the fleet. I think we have a whole lot more cars than we need.
>> I agree. [multiple voices]
>> some of these though I haven't thought of a lot like if you were an investigator, depending on what kind of cases you investigate, you may well not want to drive your own car in some areas, you see what I'm saying. You may need a county vehicle of some sort to use. They serve that purpose we have been told. But I'm like you, I sort of eagerly anticipate the answer.
>> we are also not encouraging high mileage either for them to be driving more than they need to. Just to have the mileage there to keep the car. The encouraging thing was we don't have a lot of new ones between 1999 and 2002 we have 10% of them. Obviously where we -- from the 90 to 995 model -- '95 '9model, we obviously tapered down. I said how do we get rid of them.
>> these are -- these are the hand me downs, definitely the hand me downs. Very legitimate issue in terms of the maintenance. [multiple voices] we are not getting 10,000.
>> I would probably buy a couple of them.
>> if there are no more questions I move approval.
>> second.
>> I move that the letter be sent to elected and appointed officials as recommended.
>> judge?
>> yes, sir. Go ahead. Take the vote.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
Last Modified: Wednesday, May 13, 2003 7:52 PM