Trustees seek more facts on car costs

One trustee says the analysis doesn't include information she was looking for.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
BOARDMAN -- Forty-three employees in the police, fire and road departments drive their township vehicles home.
The numbers are included in a cost analysis of township vehicles conducted by William Leicht, township fiscal officer, at trustees' request.
Trustees Kathy Miller and Robyn Gallitto have said they want to examine the possibility of using pool vehicles instead of take-home cars, or selling some of the fleet.
The township owns 86 vehicles including firetrucks and dump trucks. Of that number, 71 are cars, including 54 for the police department, 10 for the road department and seven for the fire department. In addition, the fire department has one pickup truck and the road department has three.
Take-home vehicles consist of 29 for the police department, 10 for the road department and four for the fire department.
Miller said the analysis doesn't include the kind of information she was looking for. She has asked Leicht and department heads for additional data.
She said she envisioned more of a comparison between the costs of the take-home cars vs. other options.
"There's nothing about the effectiveness of pooling vehicles," she said. "What would be the effect, for example, of eliminating 50 cars and having pool vehicles instead?"
Police department
Of the police department's 29 cars driven home by employees, 19 are unmarked vehicles driven by Chief Jeffrey Patterson, the department's two captains and members of the detective division and drug unit.
The other 10 take-home cars are marked police cars driven home by traffic, K-9, DARE and school resource officers and members of the North Boardman Neighborhood Policing unit. That unit works out of the Market Street substation. The officers cannot drive the cars for personal use.
The chief and other department representatives have said that take-home cars, particularly the marked cars, act as deterrents to crime in the neighborhoods where officers live. For both marked and unmarked, allowing the take-home cars cuts down on response time when officers are called from home.
A spokesman for the police patrolmen's union told trustees earlier this year that the detectives with the patrolman rank were provided the take-home cars in exchange for them losing the ability to work about five paid holidays per year.
That cut down on overtime pay necessitated by the holidays, the spokesman said. The spokesman estimated that that saves the township more than $17,000 annually.
Other departments
In the road department, the 10 vehicles are driven home by Superintendent Lawrence Wilson, the first and second assistant superintendents, three foremen, two mechanics, an inspector and a utility worker.
"Please take note that all employees of Boardman Township road department are on 24-hour, seven-days-a-week call-out status," Wilson wrote in a May memo about his department's vehicle usage.
In the fire department, the vehicles are driven home by Fire Chief James Dorman and three members of the fire prevention bureau. The chief has said that the vehicles could be parked outside at the department's U.S. Route 224 offices, but that could subject them to vandalism.
When parked inside the building's garage, a substance drips on them causing damage, making parking inside less than ideal, he has said.
Route 224 station
Trustees have been considering how to address the U.S. Route 224 station, the township's main and oldest fire station, which is in disrepair. A study conducted last year recommended replacing the station rather than repairing it because of the costs.
Trustees already took away two cars that had been driven home by employees, one from the police department and one from the information-technology coordinator. Darren Crivelli, zoning inspector, voluntarily gave up the two take-home cars from his department. Those cars are now driven by employees only during the workday.