Allen County commissioners, sheriff's office discuss fleet maintenance

May 21—LIMA — As members of the public deal with higher costs for goods and services, local governments are dealing with that issue, as well. On Tuesday, Allen County Commissioners met with Chief Deputy Todd Mohler of the Allen County Sheriff's Office to discuss this issue as it relates to the sheriff's office's vehicle fleet.

The tricky part when it comes to fleet maintenance, Mohler said, is knowing that "sweet spot" where the value of a patrol cruiser or a vehicle for the detective bureau can be maximized as far as how much the sheriff's office has been able to utilize the vehicle without compromising public safety or affecting the value for another agency should the county decide to retire that vehicle and replace it.

"We've always had a great relationship [with the county] to get equipment and cars, but the price of cars has gone up so much lately," he said. "The mission is to get money out of our cars that we did use for a certain amount of years and get some value out of them."

To aid in that determination, the county has been working with Enterprise Fleet Management to help watch the markets for vehicles and provide guidance on the right time to retire a vehicle for maximum returns and how to get the best value in vehicles added to the fleet.

"For far too long, what we would do is purchase something whether it was new — and with cruisers, you obviously buy new — or, with other vehicles, maybe not so much, and you would run them until you couldn't run them anymore more times than not," Commissioner Cory Noonan said. "But as we looked at this option of really doing fleet management and purchasing a vehicle at state term, you hold on to that for two or three years and we're going to have equity in this vehicle. So Enterprise has a team that really keeps an eye out on these vehicles with when you buy them and then where's the market."

With more than 30 vehicles attached to the sheriff's office and cruisers accumulating more than 100,000 miles driven each year, maximizing value in fleet management is an essential part of the county using tax dollars responsibly while ensuring public safety, Noonan said.

"Back in 2008 and 2009, [commissioners] went a couple of years without purchasing, so they really got behind," he said. "We could probably do one or two more [vehicle purchases] a year, but we're seeing prices going from $30,000 or $40,000 to wherever they're at today, it's just becoming more and more expensive."

One possibility, Noonan said, is to take older vehicles that still have good market value and put them on the market for other law enforcement agencies to purchase.

"They would be having something that's equipped, since it's difficult to transfer that stuff out, but it's also then ensuring that the men and women who are using those retired cruisers have vehicles to continue to do the work that the sheriff's office does," he said. "The point of conversation is that those SUVs that come offline that were being used, can we offload those out of the county system and replace those with other vehicles? They can consider that and we'll see where we go from there."