With the price of gas and diesel fuel at a premium, the county is moving toward more fuel-efficient vehicles for the sheriff’s department, according to County Executive John Pelham.
Pelham says several departments will exceed their fuel allotments in the budget this year due to the dramatic rise in fuel prices.
“Everybody’s looking for ways to be more conservative if we can, to be smarter with the county’s money,” Pelham said. “The commissioners are always looking at that. With what fuel we’ve used this past year, obviously with fuel prices what they are, we’ve probably had overruns in all of our departments.
“We certainly have gone over in the sheriff’s department and the ambulance service, so our fuel expenses have been a major topic of conversation,” Pelham continued. “So as we look at this coming year we don’t look for fuel prices to change for the better. If anything, they may continue to go up even more. So obviously fuel efficiency is a tremendous concern.”
Pelham said the county has budgeted funds for some new vehicles for the sheriff’s department in the next fiscal year. During budget talks, the Safety Committee, which governs the sheriff’s department, allotted $125,000 for vehicles, which was later approved by the Budget and Finance Committee.
“However many that buys,” Pelham said. “If that’s four vehicles by the time you equip them, or five, depending what the bids come in at, as to how many we can buy at $125,000.
“But this year we actually received a motion and a second that what we buy must get at lease 25 mpg,” said Pelham. “Terry Bell made the motion and Ken Martin seconded it, and the vote was unanimous.”
Pelham said the county has always tried to purchase fuel-efficient vehicles, but it’s also had to meet the requirements of the department.
“You have to balance that concern for fuel efficiency against a vehicle that can perform all the functions of the job. It has to be something large enough to haul all of the things they have to haul,” said Pelham. “Law enforcement is like a lot of things, it’s evolving. Now you have officers who have to haul all manner of clothing, gear and equipment in case they come up on a meth lab. There’s all manner of issues now. They have to be prepared so they have to be able to haul off this stuff.”
Another big change relating to this is the move from cars to utility vehicles in recent years. Pelham says there’s some good reasons for this.
“I think we could say there’s two or three different reasons,” Pelham said. “Maintenance is probably the first thing I’d list. If you look at the cars they have used in years past and the way they have to be used for the officers to do their job, whether it’s being off road occasionally or on back roads in the county or terrain they have to travel. We were experiencing a lot of rear ends going out in the cars, a lot of transmission issues, maybe because of all the weight they were hauling.
“And we can say that our sport utilities have held up. The records show our sport utilities have done better than the cars as far as maintenance,” Pelham said.
Pelham said the SUVs have also made a difference in severe weather, coming in handy during the snows over the last winter by transporting people when the county’s ambulances couldn’t get in to the area.
Pelham says the county can put specifications on the bids requiring the vehicle get at least 25 mpg. He also noted the county likes to purchase locally if possible, noting the county has been able to do so in recent years.
Though he says the current vehicles get around 21 mpg, the new more fuel-efficient models coming out from manufacturers this year show mileage figures that will meet the 25 mpg spec, so it shouldn’t be difficult to continue to buy locally, Pelham says.