Jackson County Commissioners consider plan to help defray rising fuel costs

By Deborah Buckhalter

Published: July 16, 2008

Fuel costs for Jackson County Road and Bridge are expected to exceed $1.8 million in 2009. Last year the department worked on a fuel budget of $575,000. To soften the blow of the dramatic increase, county commissioners are considering one innovative idea offered by department head Al Green.
On the county’s first day of budget deliberations Wednesday morning, Green suggested that the county build fuel stations in the four corners of the county, where the department has dirt pits, and to park road equipment in secure locations nearby.
The cost of building the fuel stations, complete with monitoring equipment to ensure that the gasoline or diesel goes to the appropriate vehicles, is estimated at $50,000 each.
Jackson County Commissioners indicated they’re interested in building at least one in the coming year, as a test case. No firm decision was reached Wednesday, but board members talked about possible funding sources to do the work.
Since dump trucks and some other pieces of heavy equipment get only five or six miles to the gallon, Green said stationing them near the dirt pits — where they’d be going anyway — and gassing them up at a fuel island nearby could save the county substantial amounts of money. The current practice is to send them to and from the county’s Marianna equipment yard each day.
Cutting the travel time could also extend the life of the vehicles and save on maintenance costs, he said. It could also mean a more efficient use of man hours, if the county assigned crew members to work on sites near their homes, he said. They would be able to report to their assignments much more quickly, get more done, and spend more actual hours on the job, if their equipment was stationed near the site and the site was near the community in which they live, he suggested.
Green suggested building fuel stations in Campbellton, near Compass Lake, and two other locations. He said he’s already had conversations with the Campbellton Town Council about parking heavy machinery on town property and that the city is open to the idea.
County officials also talked about the possibility of offering area municipalities the opportunity to fuel up at the stations, should they be built, in exchange for assisting in the cost of construction. The county’s law enforcement and other emergency service vehicles might also be able to take advantage of the islands, they said.
County staff, anticipating future gasoline and diesel price increases, estimated next year’s fuel costs at Road and Bridge, and other departments, using a price of $6 a gallon.
Road and Bridge wasn’t the only department to submit fuel budgets that skyrocketed above last year’s total.