• LESLIE WILBER - VICTORIA ADVOCATE
• Originally published July 12, 2008 at 12:03 a.m., updated July 12, 2008 at 12:03 a.m.

Fire trucks that weigh tens of tons and police sedans are greedy when it comes to gulping gas.

“We stop and start all day long,” Police Chief Bruce Ure said. “We have to turn around and accelerate quicker than a normal driver.”

Fuel budgets for the fire and police departments have more than doubled in the past five years. And actual fuel spending has gone over budget for the past four years.

This year, both departments should spend close to their budgeted amounts, city finance director Gilbert P. Reyna Jr. said.

One of the problems is the departments can’t cut fuel consumption without cutting services.

“With police and fire you can’t back off,” Reyna said. “What are you going to do, get some bicycles and tell criminals to stop?”

The city council hasn’t asked the police department to whittle away patrols, Ure said, but the department has found a few ways to conserve fuel.

Officers use their patrol cars like rolling offices – they have laptops to fill out paperwork between calls and they’re almost always driving from place to place. They typically drive about 100 miles per shift, Ure said.

“If a police officer had a nickel for every time they got in and out of their car in a shift and they could save that over their career they’d be very, very rich,” Ure said.

When officers do get out of their cars, even for a few minutes, they’re now asked to turn them off, Ure said.

The department is also installing streamlined lights on its cars to boost fuel efficiency.

Similarly, firefighters can turn off ambulances when they park, because the passenger compartment runs on a generator that uses less gas than the motor, Fire Chief Vance Riley said.

Large fire trucks must idle on scene, though, he said, to pump water and run computers.

Firefighters also wrap several errands into one trip, to travel fewer miles. For example, crews might top off an ambulance’s gas tank on the way back from the hospital, rather than making a special run, Riley said.

Budgeting for emergency fleets is finicky, given the lack of elasticity in their fuel consumption, Reyna said.

Reyna reads market trends and world news to try to predict gas prices, he said.

“You’ve got to use every tool you’ve got,” he said. He also has to keep in mind how the departments will change their programs.

In 2006, the fire department overspent on fuel by $78,776. That was the year the department started to dispatch more – and often larger – vehicles, Reyna said. When departments spend too much on gas they must make up that amount by saving in other sections of their budgets or ask the city council for more money, Reyna said.

Next year, he expects the fire department to burn more fuel after a new fire station is built and vehicles are added.

To cover the cost, Reyna will likely propose a $35,000 increase to its fuel budget.

Sheriff T. Michael O’Connor tracks trends in gas prices when he estimates how much his office will spend. He’s projected gas will cost more than $5 a gallon by the end of the year.

“My Lord, I hope we don’t go to $5 a gallon gas,” O’Connor said. “But if there’s a trend and you don’t see a deviation from it, you plan for that.”

The sheriff’s office contracts with the city to buy gas, O’Connor said.

The city has a contract with New Distributing that fixes its gas and low-emission diesel prices at 1 cent per gallon above the company’s cost, said Stephen Trevino, director of inspection and maintenance services said the city pays 8.3 cents per gallon above cost for ultra-low sulfur diesel.

The county pays an 8 percent surcharge to the city, O’Connor said.

All this adds up to whopping line items for fuel.

O’Connor will meet with the county commissioners court and county Judge Don Pozzi next week to ask for more money for the sheriff’s office budget, he said. He did not want to disclose the amount he would ask for before meeting with Pozzi.

In the meantime, Ure, Riley and O’Connor all said they’d be happy to hear suggestions on how to save on gas.

“I thought I would have to bring some horses in,” O’Connor said, with a laugh. They could nibble at tall lawns between calls, the sheriff joked.

Leslie Wilber is a reporter for the Victoria Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6521 or e-mail her at lwilber@vicad.com or comment on this story at www.VictoriaAdvocate.com

• Print
• •
• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

    Share on FaceBook

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• •
• 4 Comments
• •
• Favorite
• •
• Report error
  • Thank you for your submission.
    Error report or correction

    Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  

    
  • Close
• •