Finance Committee Page 20
August 3, 2016
Alderman O’Brien
Can they go through a wash occasionally to maintain it. That’s just as important as an oil change.
Alderman Siegel
It sounds like a legitimate concern. What you have basically done is, the reason I’m seeing such a low
mileage, is it’s not that there’s not mileage being accumulated, it’s just been shifted to other automobiles that
were more reliable.
Ms. Peek
Yes.
Alderman Siegel
If you could just give a sense of the amount of miles, either you or Director Bagley, it would just make me feel
more comfortable. | support safe driving and something cost effective. If what we are doing is just taking
mileage and shifting them elsewhere then that 57 cents a mile doesn’t make sense in light of what | am seeing
in front of me. | don’t want to get a false sense of the data. Perhaps you can clarify that.
Director Bagley
| did take a note of that. We'll take a look back at some of the mileage reimbursement because we do keep
records of all of those things. Yes, we do have that data.
Alderman Siegel
We can get that data?
Ms. Peek
Yes. And may | say one last thing? | liked the fuel economy of this. | thought that would go a long way. My
understanding was that this was a better model vehicle and was excited about that, but we can certainly pull
that together for you.
Vice Chairman Cookson
| think to Alderman O’Brien’s point, and | think he hit the nail on the head, and that is regardless of what vehicle
you get or don’t get or the fleet that we do have, we have to maintain it. It’s not going to do us any good if we
buy this $25,000 car and let it rust out just as easily as this 2002. You're going to be sitting with a car that is
not reliable and you’re not going to let people drive. We've got to take a better stance at maintaining our
vehicles. This isn’t public health. This is the city. When we start looking at the facility on Burke Street and
being able to have a garage, things like that makes sense that say that we are doing the right things and we’re
going to maintain the assets that the city has. Thank you, Alderman O’Brien for making that statement.
Alderman Siegel
I’ve been swayed a little bit by the some of the things that have been said. On the other hand, it would be kind
of nice to know how much miles are going to be driven. I’m not sure what the sense of urgency is about this.
Perhaps we can make a better informed decision. If | make a motion to table it can be voted down which is
fine. | don’t to stifle communications, but it sounds like we’ve talked about this.
