Leasing equipment and/or vehicles

[gorja]

Lee Chowaniec brought up the idea of looking into leasing equipment or vehicles as an option for the highway department at the last town board meeting.

Here' an article regarding St Lawrence county, NY opting to lease their vehicles.

Procurement
Leasing: A Budget & Maintenance Solution

May 2017, Government Fleet - Cover Story
by Thi Dao

Just two years ago, St. Lawrence County, N.Y., faced an aging fleet, with vehicles as old as MY-1993. The Great Recession had forced the city to defer its vehicle purchases. Use of salt on roadways caused vehicle corrosion, and maintenance costs rose — as did fleet technician overtime, according to Don Chambers, the county’s superintendent of highways.

Like many public agencies around the country with aging fleets, the county didn’t have the funding needed to replace all its vehicles due for replacement.

In 2016, it came up with a solution: leasing. Leasing allowed the county to purchase more vehicles up front, improve the fuel efficiency of its vehicles, and slash maintenance costs.

Slashing Fuel & Maintenance Costs

“Just keep the fleet in motion — that was one of the contributing factors in the decision [to lease],” Chambers said.

In 2016, the county leased 23 vehicles for the Highway Department. These included sedans, half-ton pickup trucks, and medium-duty trucks and replaced the oldest vehicles in the fleet. The open-ended leases with Enterprise — primarily five-year contracts — allow the county to get back money if the cars resell for higher than the estimated residual value.

Staff has already seen the benefits of its newer vehicles. The 23 old vehicles cost the county $30,000 per year to maintain — the leased vehicles cost about $2,000. The old vehicles consumed $50,000 in fuel per year, while the newer vehicles consumed less than $25,000 in fuel (Fuel prices decreased by 13% during this time, which contributed to reduced fuel costs).

In-house fleet technicians maintain the vehicles. Because maintenance and repair work decreases with a newer fleet, technicians may become concerned that their jobs are going away. This wasn’t a problem at St. Lawrence County.

“Due to some of the staff time that has been freed up, we’ve taken on repair work for other governments and another division of the county that’s in an enterprise fund,” Chambers said.

The additional work for outside agencies brought in revenue, even as the fleet reduced technician overtime hours.

For 2017, the county has leased 24 more vehicles, mostly sedans for the Department of Social Services (DSS). DSS received funding from the state to upgrade its vehicles, allowing Chambers to shift some of the department’s cars that are just over five years old to other departments with older units, he said.

Chambers admits that purchasing vehicles may be cheaper than leasing. But for the situation the county found itself in, getting old cars cycled out of the fleet faster, reducing maintenance costs, and taking advantage of grant opportunities made leasing a smarter choice.

He sees the county going toward leasing its entire light-duty fleet of 152 vehicles.
“The fact that they’re driving newer, safer vehicles that do not have rot holes through door panels, or what have you, I think it’s good for morale, and good for the employees,” Chambers said.

http://www.government-fleet.com/chan...-solution.aspx

[WNYresident]

Staff has already seen the benefits of its newer vehicles. The 23 old vehicles cost the county $30,000 per year to maintain — the leased vehicles cost about $2,000. The old vehicles consumed $50,000 in fuel per year, while the newer vehicles consumed less than $25,000 in fuel (Fuel prices decreased by 13% during this time, which contributed to reduced fuel costs).

In-house fleet technicians maintain the vehicles. Because maintenance and repair work decreases with a newer fleet, technicians may become concerned that their jobs are going away. This wasn’t a problem at St. Lawrence County.

Are they leaving out the lease cost per year? You can not lease 23 vehicles for $2000 a year. If $2000 was maintanance cost that would be $87 a year per year... is that what they are referring to?

Why is it anyone's concern that technicians jobs may go away if vehicles are leased. Each of those technicians may have no issue getting a prime membership on Amazon versus dealing with local merchants. Many government employees have no issue if anyone else's jobs go away or if people flee the community they serve due to property taxes.

[jennifer7]

Are they leaving out the lease cost per year? You can not lease 23 vehicles for $2000 a year. If $2000 was maintanance cost that would be $87 a year per year... is that what they are referring to?

Why is it anyone's concern that technicians jobs may go away if vehicles are leased. Each of those technicians may have no issue getting a prime membership on Amazon versus dealing with local merchants. Many government employees have no issue if anyone else's jobs go away or if people flee the community they serve due to property taxes.

Purchasing replacement vehicles & construction equipment are not the reason's why property taxes keep going up, It's the employee's yearly raises, benefits, yearly longevity pay bonus's, pension's, pension spiking & retirement bonsus's

[WNYresident]

Purchasing replacement vehicles & construction equipment are not the reason's why property taxes keep going up, It's the employee's yearly raises, benefits, yearly longevity pay bonus's, pension's, pension spiking & retirement bonsus's

I know that. No one in the system wants to talk about the elephant in the room. Specially if the very same people will cast a vote.

[jennifer7]

I know that. No one in the system wants to talk about the elephant in the room. Specially if the very same people will cast a vote.

No one wants to talk about this on this board, the local radio talk shows, the local tv & news paper's either. Rather talk about national issue's & sports lol
Again, People get what they deserve !! Yet they are paying over 10 time higher property taxes then the national average and it's going up every year. Yet they don't receive the level of service's which are the national standards and available everywhere else and still have unmaned volunteer FD's that have been run for decades by the same people that work for the government. The only thing they care about is having the newest model take home luxury Tahoe's with the coolest graphics, toys and have as many lights as they can have and go to many convention's, conferences & training events in Florida, & Las Vegas etc... aka Vacations, drinking and eat lobster & prime rib and give themselves stipends (called money)for being the Chief, Asst Chief's, President, Vice president etc.or for what ever reason, all being paid for by the taxpayers, THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE 7 DIGIT YEARLY CHECKS WITH NO ACCOUNTABILITY, NO WHERE ELSE IN THE COUNTRY WILL FIND THIS !!!!

[Lee Chowaniec]

No one wants to talk about this on this board, the local radio talk shows, the local tv & news paper's either. Rather talk about national issue's & sports lol
Again, People get what they deserve !! Yet they are paying over 10 time higher property taxes then the national average and it's going up every year. Yet they don't receive the level of service's which are the national standards and available everywhere else and still have unmaned volunteer FD's that have been run for decades by the same people that work for the government. The only thing they care about is having the newest model take home luxury Tahoe's with the coolest graphics, toys and have as many lights as they can have and go to many convention's, conferences & training events in Florida, & Las Vegas etc... aka Vacations, drinking and eat lobster & prime rib and give themselves stipends (called money)for being the Chief, Asst Chief's, President, Vice president etc.or for what ever reason, all being paid for by the taxpayers, THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE 7 DIGIT YEARLY CHECKS WITH NO ACCOUNTABILITY, NO WHERE ELSE IN THE COUNTRY WILL FIND THIS !!!!

Disagree!

The so-called elephant in the room regarding town patronage, salary structure, outrageous town contributions to pension and benefit programs, and lack of personnel accountability has been addressed on this site numerous times; recently as well as past years.

It has been pointed out that town employee costs exceed 50% of the budget and that the percent of health insurance contributions paid by town employees is ludicrous in today’s standards (5% for union employees and 8.5% for the non bargaining town employees). And four more positions are being added in the 2018 budget.

Former Supervisor Dino Fudoli tried reigning in union demands. They (unions) along with the support of town and school district unionized employees crushed Fudoli in his re-election rebid. We live in a blue state where unions and politicos are attached at the hip. Change does not come easy.