Rising fuel costs weighing on services, budget planning

David Palmer and Kate McCardell
Floridan Staff
Published: May 31, 2008

As gasoline prices spiral out of control local government are taking some steps to control costs.

Nonetheless, the difficult challenge of writing budgets is under way and predicting gas prices is almost impossible at this point.

Just how serious is the problem for those who provide services to the general population?

Consider that school bus and related traffic generates about 5,000 miles per day. At a rate of $4 per gallon, delivering children to school and home becomes more expensive than anticipated.

Services such as running road graders eat a lot of gas. Running law-enforcement patrol cars is a round-the-clock necessity.

But fortunately these services have not ground to a halt. Officials in government can only anticipate and calculate the future costs.

“The Road and Bridge Department is contemplating different things to help out, such as identifying roads that do not need a grader, but could use a tractor instead. Running a tractor uses less fuel,” said Pam Pichard, administrative services director for Jackson County.

Pichard said the county can expect to be over budget in fuel costs by today because of the rapid increase in the cost of gas and oil.

Pichard said that when the current budget was written, long before gas prices began soaring, almost $50,000 was trimmed out because of other budget concerns.

An example of how much gas and oil can cost the county is illustrated in the recent budgets. The 2006-2007 budget totaled at $616,370. The current fiscal year budget was approved for $575,000.

Compounding the problem for any government is the requirement for flexibility in negotiating a fuel contract. A supplier must have room to raise prices when cost rise so steadily. Otherwise the supplier would go out of business from losses, Pichard said.

Further illustrating the problem is just the cost of maintaining fuel in a fire truck.

“We have been feeling it like everybody else,” said Marianna Fire Chief Bryon Bennett. “What we’ve done is try to limit our coming and going as much as possible. Of course, we still respond to every call dispatched to us, but any extra riding around is limited.”

Bennett said the department makes an effort to keep the staff vehicle available as much as possible so that employees who need to go somewhere, for instance, to buy food can use the staff vehicle instead of an engine.

One of the fire department’s diesel engines fills up at 75 gallons, while the other engine fills up at 50.

The engines aren’t the only “gas guzzlers” at the fire department.

“We use a lot of fuel, with our engines, then we have chainsaws and the generators on the truck. We use a lot of fuel,” said Bennett.

He said budgeting for fuel costs isn’t a major problem in this fiscal year, but he fears that with the ever-rising price for gas, he may have to cut out some line-items in next year’s budget to reserve enough for fuel.

“We still have a job to do. We still have to use our trucks and that comes first. So they’re might be, unfortunately, other items in the budget we’ll have to scratch off if these increases continue,” said Bennett.

He said Jackson County Fire and Rescue is probably “feeling the heat” of rising gas prices even more, since the county department also utilizes ambulances and sometimes performs “stand-bys.”

The Jackson County School Board is facing similar problems with its fleet of buses. Fuel costs are also driving up the cost of milk and other items served to students.

“It’s difficult to anticipate because it hasn’t slowed down. It will be difficult to bid,” said Kenny Griffin, a member of the school board.

In as little as five years the cost of fuel has risen nearly four times for the school board. Griffin also noted that a supplier must be given room to survive when sharp, unexpected hikes occur in fuel costs.

“Everything we purchase is growing substantially in cost. But we are going to get students to school and back home,” Griffin said.