Glenn hopes to help parks, buses by trimming police perk: take-home cars

A Colorado Springs city councilman is driving a cost-cutting effort that could put the brakes on a police perk: take-home government vehicles.

Hoping to ferret out an additional $1 million from the Police Department’s 2010 budget to restore some of the proposed cuts in parks and recreation and possibly in transit, Councilman Darryl Glenn said this week that he wants to find out whether the department can “look a little deeper” and reduce the number of take-home vehicles.

“I think it’s fiscally responsible, especially with the impact that we’re having on parks and recreation and transit,” he said. “I’m trying to find $1 million, at least, to be able to give back to those particular areas.”

Of the 107 city employees and appointees who get take-home government vehicles, 79 work in the Police Department, according to documents obtained under an open-records request. See a database of those vehicles here.

The employees include police Chief Richard Myers, who drives a 2007 Ford hybrid, which he is allowed to use for personal errands under his contract, at least 10 commanders and deputy chiefs, several undercover officers and members of the SWAT team and K-9 unit.

Between January and through most of October, the 107 city employees with government vehicles logged nearly 800,000 miles. Police employees racked up the majority - nearly 600,000 miles.

City officials could not immediately provide the overall costs of take-home vehicles, from gas and maintenance to the purchase price of vehicles.

The total miles logged by police and other city employees with take-home vehicles includes commuting time, so it’s difficult to say what the cost would be if employees sought mileage reimbursement for their personal vehicles. Private employers usually don't reimburse workers for their commute to and from work.

Tim Burke, a city spokesman, said the city reimburses employees 55 cents a mile. For employees with take-home vehicles, the city “typically” picks up the costs for gas and maintenance of those vehicles.

Police defended the use of take-home vehicles, which department spokesman Lt. David Whitlock said have a “significant impact” on police operations when an immediate response is necessary.

Case in point: the deadly December 2007 shooting at New Life Church, he said.

“Within 20 or 25 minutes of the start of that event, we had two deputy chiefs and a commander on scene taking command of that situation,” he said. “All three of them had assigned take-home vehicles that they were able to get into, utilize their police radio and other equipment that they have to be on scene to command what could have been potentially one of the most horrific circumstances ever from a standpoint of mass shootings.”

It's not a perk when you have an around-the-clock job, Whitlock said.

“It’s not like we close up at 5 o’clock at night and our cars can just be sitting in a parking lot waiting for us to come back,” he said.

Whitlock, who drives a 2009 Ford sedan owned by the city, said the department has already pared down its fleet.

“I’m confident that if we would be able to save people’s jobs and prevent the other cuts that we have engaged in by reducing our vehicle fleet or their usage that that would have come off of the list many, many months prior to where we are now,” he said.

But Whitlock said he’s requested a cost breakdown in light of Glenn’s proposal.

“Intuitively, we don’t think these numbers are very, very large,” he said. “In addition, there are a lot of soft costs related to individuals who have on-call responsibilities to respond to a police station and then respond to a call, which of course would include delays in response, having to pay additional overtime, mileage for their personal vehicle use and so forth. What we’re going to try to kind of bundle that all up into a ball and then see if we can come up with a generalized figure either in pro or con to what it would mean if, for example, we parked every single take-home vehicle that we have.”

Glenn said he just wants to find out whether police “are cutting back as much as we can without impacting the (public safety) mission.”

“There’s some questions that I need answers to as far as salaries, whether there’s any additional salary savings, not allowing any take home vehicles, anything like that, because we’re devastating all the other support areas in the city,” he said.

Government vehicles issued to city employees can only be used for official city business. The only exception: city appointees, who “may use the vehicle for personal as well as business reasons,” according to the city’s policy and procedure manual.

The chief, who has logged about 8,000 miles this year, uses his city-owned Ford hybrid “a small percentage of time for personal use,” Whitlock said.

“I think within the purview of the agreement that he has contractually for his job, he could take it to Safeway and buy a steak. Sure,” he said.

The chief’s take-home vehicle came in handy one night when tactical officers were shot at in southwest Colorado Springs, Whitlock said.

“The chief was at dinner with his family at the time that happened. He had his police car with him because he took it because it was an en route thing,” Whitlock said. “He came to that scene and was part of the management of the command structure at that location, and why? Because he has a take-home vehicle.”