Martin O?Malley made reducing the size of Baltimore City?s fleet of vehicles a top priority of his mayoral administration.
Both his transition team and the Greater Baltimore Committee, a group of regional business leaders, cited it as an area ripe for cost-cutting.
After a year of slashing the number of taxpayer-financed cars city employees took home, a January 2001 city press release declared the sell-off would save the city $1 million in unnecessary costs in 2001 and “at least $500,000 annually in reduced maintenance, fuel and other expenses.”
Almost six years later, O?Malley fulfilled his promise to cut the number of vehicles and motorized equipment. The city has dropped 15 percent of it vehicles since 2000. And undoubtedly fleet costs would be even higher if taxpayers still maintained the 971 it cut.
But fuel expenditures have risen. The city could not provide statistics going back to 2000, but fuel costs more than doubled from 2003 to 2006 to $8.9 million. Gas prices rose during that time ? but so did the amount of gas city vehicles consumed, from about 4 million gallons to 4.3 million gallons while the cuts were being made. How is that possible? Wouldn?t it be reasonable to assume consumption should decrease with fewer cars and pieces of equipment?
Kurt Kocher, the spokesman for the city?s department of public works, says many factors influence fuel consumption, including weather.
He also said, “In an effort to reduce fuel use, we have instructed drivers to maintain proper tire pressure, have vehicles serviced as scheduled and not leave vehicles running idle.” Good advice. But it will never structurally reform the city?s fleet operations.
A better solution would be to eliminate city fueling stations ?also an early recommendation by the Greater Baltimore Committee.
The 2006 budget shows that the city continues to maintain 10 fueling stations ? the same number as in 1998 when it had at least 15 percent more vehicles and equipment. Using them means city employees must often waste time ? and fuel ? driving to them instead of a private service station. And the fuel stations require 10 “storekeepers” at $303,042 per year. Eliminating those positions would take the city more than halfway to its goal of saving $500,000 each year.
The GBC recommended centralizing fuel stations and using fuel cards for private stations among other suggestions because “It is extremely expensive to maintain and operate the city?s network of fueling sites.” We agree.
Those are still good ideas, and maintaining the fuel stations still drains the city budget.
O?Malley must make eliminating the fuel stations his parting gift to city taxpayers this holiday season before he heads to Annapolis. It would signal that cutting government waste is more than campaign rhetoric.
