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MetroParks director explains vehicle purchases
YOUNGSTOWN
Though implementation of staff cuts Feb. 12 at Mill Creek MetroParks raised the ire of many community members, an action a few days later has some of those same people asking questions.
On Feb. 18, Mill Creek MetroParks spent $70,000 on three 2016 Jeeps, one of which is for Executive Director Aaron Young. That brings the MetroParks’ total expenditures on new vehicles up to $189,364 since Young took over as director in January 2015, a fact that some residents point to as evidence that the park system was not in dire enough financial straits to warrant 13 staff dismissals.
That figure compares with $68,650 spent on vehicle purchases in 2013 and 2014 under former park director Dennis Miller.
“[Young] did his layoffs, which [The Vindicator] uncovered. The next week, he did more layoffs. And at the end of that same week, he went and bought not one Jeep, not two Jeeps, but three Jeeps,” said Judy Peyko, a community member vocally opposed to the staff cuts who learned of the vehicle purchases by public-records requests.
“He did this on the backs of the employees he terminated,” she said of Young. “I thought that was really an abuse of power and a waste of taxpayers’ dollars. Does this sound like a park that’s having financial difficulties?”
Young, however, explains the vehicle purchases and staff restructuring as in tandem with the same goal: streamlining operations.
“I think maybe because of the timing, that’s what people are looking at,” he said. “But the reduction in staff and the vehicle purchases are only connected in that they are part of the organization looking to become more efficient. There is no direct tie from one to the other.”
One of his first observations after starting as director, he said, was how many vehicles the MetroParks owned.
“Then I noticed what poor shape they were in. The first question I asked was, ‘Why do we need all these vehicles? And two, ‘why is there not a replacement schedule that keeps them from getting this old?’” he said.
The park system did not have a fleet-turnover plan, and did not have a system to determine when the cost of repairing a vehicle was no longer worth it, Young said. Starting last year, his team began to develop that kind of formula.
“It’s an ongoing evaluation of what do we need, how do we replace it, what are some of the anticipated costs of replacing it,” he said.
The goals are to reduce the number of vehicles the park system owns, spend less money on vehicle maintenance, devise a vehicle-turnover plan and lower the average age of vehicles owned by the MetroParks, Young said.
Under Young, the MetroParks already has reduced the size of its vehicle fleet. When he started, it owned 84 vehicles; it now owns 80.
“We want to bring that number down, but we don’t know what the ultimate number will be,” he said.
Of those vehicles, some are assigned to specific employees, such as Young, the MetroParks police chief, and the head of the maintenance department. Employees who can be called out to a site at any time (like Young) are permitted to take their work vehicles home.
Other vehicles are maintained for departmental use when needed. Every department has access to park vehicles, Young said.
“The vehicle is a necessary component of operating the MetroParks. It’s a tool of the trade, much as a computer is,” he said.
The logic behind buying new vehicles to save money, Young said, is that it reduces what the MetroParks spends on repairs. As part of that, the internal reorganization included elimination of a shop supervisor, who managed the mechanics.
“It’s not realistic to the organization to completely eliminate the mechanics and then dump all of that on new vehicles. The answer is somewhere in between,” he said.