Tuesday, April 29, 2008
County Revs Up Vehicle Policy
Hot on the heels of the City Council-Mayoral debate over what City-owned vehicles can be taken home and by whom, the County Council’s committee on Government Reform will try to establish its own policy by taking up a bill to define the use of County vehicles and their take home use. If passed, the bill will create a policy in which the County manager will take an annual count of the vehicles and their characteristics, and whether the vehicle is allowed to be taken home by an employee. The legislation would prohibit the vehicles for “any and all personal uses”.
Granted, there are significant differences from the City’s situation—the Act 47 team actually took the City’s fleet of 83 vehicles and prescribed the steps to remove their use by officials not performing public safety or public health functions and then the remainder with low mileage would be examined individually. The goal was to get the 83 down to 29. Only now is the City getting around to it and the number is well above the 29.
But in both cases, the language of the Act 47 team is apropos: that take home vehicle use was “a symbolically negative image to the City workforce and the public counter to the dire nature of the City’s finances and the need for permanent reform”. With the County’s financial picture not too rosy, and the presence of new taxes on drinks, the Council’s move, if enacted, might be an attempt to head off that perception.
Granted, there are significant differences from the City’s situation—the Act 47 team actually took the City’s fleet of 83 vehicles and prescribed the steps to remove their use by officials not performing public safety or public health functions and then the remainder with low mileage would be examined individually. The goal was to get the 83 down to 29. Only now is the City getting around to it and the number is well above the 29.
But in both cases, the language of the Act 47 team is apropos: that take home vehicle use was “a symbolically negative image to the City workforce and the public counter to the dire nature of the City’s finances and the need for permanent reform”. With the County’s financial picture not too rosy, and the presence of new taxes on drinks, the Council’s move, if enacted, might be an attempt to head off that perception.
