Questions and Answers III
Updated: Aug 30
What is your position on implementing Fleet Gas Monitoring and Taking City Vehicles Home?
My stance on city fleet management is straightforward: Every single tax dollar spent on municipal fuel and vehicle usage must be mathematically accounted for through strict, modern tracking, and the practice of taking city vehicles home must be restricted exclusively to emergency, on-call operational needs.
Our city fleet and machinery are currently facing real structural pressures. In fact, North Bay council just approved nearly $95,000 for a Strategic Operations Review of Fleet Services to figure out how to manage these assets better. We shouldn't need a massive, expensive consultant report to tell us that we need basic fiscal discipline on fuel and vehicle usage.
While the city has implemented Automated Vehicle Location (AVL) tracking on some vehicles in the past, we need to ensure that real-time fuel and gas monitoring is universally applied across the entire municipal inventory. If a vehicle is idling excessively, losing fuel, or being used for non-municipal business, the data should flag it instantly.
When it comes to staff taking city-owned vehicles home, there is a clear line to draw. If an employee is a first responder or an on-call public works technician who must deploy instantly to a 2 a.m. watermain break, having a vehicle at home is a necessary logistical tool to keep our city running safely. But if a vehicle is being taken home simply as a non-operational perk or a substitute for personal commuting, that is an unacceptable cost shifting directly onto the backs of North Bay taxpayers.
I support our workers having the right tools to do their jobs safely and efficiently, but I will always vote for rigorous data tracking and tight operational boundaries over unmonitored perks.
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