Scioto County Commissioners approved an agreement with Enterprise to continue providing vehicles as part of the county’s fleet management program for the Scioto County Sheriff’s Office.
According to Commissioner Scottie Powell, the agreement should save the county an estimated $1 million over a 10-year period. “This is just another phase of replacing vehicles. Enterprise uses a lot of data analytics and identify vehicles we can sell for a profit. When we start our leases, we end up making more on the sale of the vehicles.”
Powell said in addition to the Sheriff’s Office, they were adding a couple of vehicles for Children Services. “They’ve been paying out almost $80,000 a year in mileage to people using personal vehicles.” He said the county could now be sure that CPS workers were doing visits in safe vehicles it could control and maintain.
This is a far cry from the chaos that ensued when SCDN revealed that under former Sheriff Marty Donini, used vehicles were kept piled up in an unlicensed junkyard on property belonging to a late special deputy.
When the story broke four years ago, the commissioners, led by the late Mike Crabtree, expressed shock that the Sheriff’s Office lacked a proper fleet management program.
A fleet management program tracks fuel use and maintenance, makes sure to take vehicles out regularly for service, takes older vehicles out of service, and arranges for their sale through proper channels.
Instead of being stored at a county facility, the out-of-service vehicles were stacked up in a field once owned by a deceased special deputy. The facility was not licensed or bonded.
Commissioners were originally told there were 62 vehicles there that were worth nothing more than scrap. An independent audit showed there were actually 79. While some were indeed scrapped, others had a value of up to $1200.
