Dan Horn

dhorn@enquirer.com

Eight months after deciding it might own too many trucks and vans, the Metropolitan Sewer District wants to buy more trucks and vans.

The agency in charge of building and maintaining Hamilton County’s sewers is seeking $1.4 million next year for new dump trucks, vans, pickups and other vehicles.

Big utilities like MSD buy new vehicles all the time, usually to replace older ones worn out from years of traveling to work sites.

But this request is raising eyebrows among the county officials who set MSD’s budget because it comes so soon after the agency concluded it wasn’t using the vehicles it already has as often as it should.

An internal review of MSD’s fleet in January found more than 40 percent of its 272 vehicles didn’t meet the city of Cincinnati’s standards for minimum mileage or hours of use.

“It is clear that some changes are necessary to ‘right-size’ MSD’s inventory of vehicles/equipment and increase utilization … to an acceptable level,” MSD Director Gerald Checco wrote in the January report.

Despite that declaration, Checco said the agency is asking for additional vehicles this year as replacements for old ones that are becoming too costly to maintain and wouldn't easily be swapped out for similar, under-used vehicles already in MSD's inventory.

County officials are unconvinced. They say MSD will have to make a stronger case if it wants to spend more money to buy and maintain new vehicles with money from the thousands of homeowners and businesses that pay sewer bills in Hamilton County.

"This is money that's coming out of ratepayers' pockets," said County Commissioner Chris Monzel.

Wish list: Dump trucks, vans, pickups and more

The list of under-used vehicles includes cars and small pickup trucks that MSD employees drive to work sites and meetings, as well as utility vehicles and dump trucks used for major repairs and construction.

Smaller vehicles range in price from about $18,000 to $30,000, while dump trucks can run more than $120,000.

Checco said he knows MSD’s vehicles can be better used and he’s working on the problem.

He recently set up vehicle pools around the county to give more workers access to trucks, cars and other vehicles. A van once designated for engineers, for example, now might also be used by administrators, or vice versa.

Checco also is setting up a tracking system to better monitor the use of vehicles and is encouraging more employees to use MSD cars on the job instead of their own, which could also reduce liability.

“Instead of having a bunch of cars used maybe 30 percent of the time, you have them used more,” Checco said. “We will see a better utilization of the vehicles.”

That’s all well and good, county officials say, but why is MSD asking for more vehicles now?

The budget request for 2017 seeks two new dump trucks, five vans, four pickup trucks and more. The fleet review found that MSD already has eight under-used dump trucks, 22 under-used vans and 13 under-used pickup trucks.

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“Shouldn’t we be optimizing the use of these vehicles?” said Dave Meyer, the county’s director of utility oversight. “There’s a lot of dump trucks that don’t have many miles on them. Why couldn’t we use them?”

Meyer said he first became concerned about MSD’s fleet more than a year ago when he looked out his office window at the sewer district’s headquarters and saw cars and trucks sitting in a parking lot.

Over the course of weeks, he said, some of those vehicles didn’t seem to move very often.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I wonder how many vehicles aren’t being used,” Meyer said.

He started asking questions and last year challenged MSD officials about the need for more cars and trucks. As a result, county officials stripped vehicle requests from last year’s budget.

Putting new requests "under a microscope"

When Checco took over the top job at MSD last year, he did a deeper dive into the problem and produced the vehicle utilization report. Checco, who has worked for the city for years and has a reputation as a detail-oriented administrator, did a similar study years ago of the city’s entire fleet.

He said the new vehicle policies MSD has adopted should help him figure out within the next six months or so how many vehicles the agency really needs. Already, he said, about 10 vehicles have been taken out of service and will likely be sold.

“Do we have the proper amount? Right now, we don’t know,” Checco said.

He said some of the vehicles MSD wants to replace cost thousands of dollars a year in repairs and, in some cases, are more than a decade old.

According to the budget request, the vans that would be replaced have an average mileage of 61,900 and the pickup trucks have an average of 68,300. All were purchased in 2004.

Meyer said it might be cheaper for MSD to rent some vehicles on an as-needed basis until it figures out what it needs and what it can do without. He said continuing the freeze on buying new vehicles for another year might not be a bad idea.

County commissioners will make the call on the request when they consider the budget proposal this fall. Like Monzel, commissioners Dennis Deters and Todd Portune said they are wary of buying more vehicles for MSD.

“I think any request for vehicles would come under a microscope,” said Portune, who hasn’t seen the request yet. “Without knowing more, this would be a tough sell.”

If a dispute arises over the vehicles, it would be one of many to pop up in recent years between the city, which operates MSD, and the county, which oversees its budget.

Those disagreements grew more intense this year after a series of Enquirer articles exposed questionable spending practices and a lack of oversight at the sewer district.

The two governments have feuded all year over how best to run the agency and are mired in a federal court fight over who gets final say over spending.

The arrangement that paired the city and county expires in 2018 and both sides are trying to plan for what comes next. Talks are continuing in federal court, but neither side will discuss them.

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