“So we have seven people on the committee, and every legislator is welcome to come in and give opinions. I think we all are snowflakes and think differently. And that’s why we’re gonna end up voting on every recommendation.”
— Committee chair Joe Maloney
Convinced that the county was no longer following the Charlie Busik policy, a protocol adopted in 2007 which spells out how county employees can and cannot use county-owned vehicles to commute to and from work, Ulster County’s legislature has established a review committee to look into the matter.
Perpetual thorn in the side of county operations, legislator Joe Maloney of Saugerties had been calling attention to the need for change for months, publicly referring to Department of Public Works commissioner Brendan Masterson as “Mustang Man” due to the model Ford he alleged Masterson was using as his personal vehicle.
Withering criticism followed the Daily Freeman’s Patricia Doxsey’s amplification of Maloney’s message. Masterson surrendered the keys to the vehicle. The county owns five all-electric Mustang Mach-Es. None are meant to be taken home.
Tasked with recommending reform measures and developing internal controls for ensuring that county fleet policies are fair, controlled, complied with, and designed in the best interest of the taxpayers, the Ulster County Fleet Management Review Committee has until September to study the usage of the county fleet and submit recommendations.
Maloney will chair the committee. Other members are Chris Hewitt, Aaron Levine, Herb Litts, Laura Petit, Kevin Roberts and Eric Stewart.
“If you’re going to be a real legislature, then every time something like this comes up … you have to call a special committee,” said Maloney. “That’s what the legislators are supposed to do, and that’s where our power is. Really, it’s oversight. We’re policy and we’re fund appropriation. And if you’re not diving in and having special meetings and committees and commissions, then you’re just a rubber stamp.”
Green goals updated
The inaugural meeting of the committee coincided with the release of the county’s 2023 green-fleet report. The oversight body will not only get a handle on who is driving what, where, how often and at what cost, but also assess the impact to the environment of the 481-vehicle fleet.
Goals of the county’s green-fleet policy were updated in 2022 to increase the minimum percentage of the fleet from five percent green to 20 percent by 2025.
Among them, he DPW/highway department (147 vehicles), the sheriff’s office (101), and UCAT (44) operate 61 percent of all county vehicles. Though 80 of those vehicles are considered green, just 16 are presently classified as zero-emission.
What does green mean?
Zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), which have no internal combustion engine under the hood, and thus produce no emissions, are the maximum definition of a green vehicle. ZEVs generate their horsepower solely from battery-stored electricity. The county owns relatively few of these. (The Mustangs are ZEVs.)
The county also owns and operates an assortment of vehicles which employ various technologies to reduce fuel consumption or emissions. Vehicles that employ electric drive trains or hybrid-electric vehicles that use both a rechargeable energy-storage system and combustible fuel also qualify as green.
This is not just greenspeak. Through the usage of these vehicles, Ulster County government asserts that from 2015-2023, employment of vehicles with these varied new technologies managed to prevent 435 metric tons of emissions.
By the time 2025 rolls to a close, to meet its goals the county intends to obtain 16 more green vehicles, to ditch 80 gas guzzlers, or to blend the two strategies.
Rightsizing the fleet
The county purchased 542,746 gallons of gasoline in 2023 at a cost of nearly two million dollars. The concept of rightsizing what some have suggested is an unnecessarily large fleet of vehicles is gaining traction.
“Dutchess County’s got 120,000 more people than we do being provided services by the county,” said Maloney. “They’ve got a bigger DA’s office, a bigger sheriff’s department, probably a bigger jail. A bigger DPW. Bigger DSS. Bigger everything.”
And somehow Dutchess County has fewer take-home vehicles. These are the kinds of data points Maloney wants to study. He has already been talking with county employees, and says there are good reasons why some county employee would drive their county vehicles home.
“There’s one individual that drives a specific truck, the truck that goes around and fixes blowouts. Now he has a take-home vehicle,” said Maloney. “Say there’s a snowplow vehicle that blows out a tire in the middle of the night. That individual now takes his take-home truck, drives it to the quarry, picks up the actual vehicle that he uses during his job, and then goes out.”
Tradition too seems to consecrate the usage of take-home vehicles. Maloney recalled a conversation months earlier with an unidentified corrections officer.
“Well, why does [he have a take-home vehicle]?” Maloney asked, role-playing both sides of the conversation. “He became captain.” I said, “Why does a captain that works in the jail every day need a vehicle? Well, that’s a fringe benefit of becoming captain. So I think there is a little bit of that [which] we’re going to be dealing with here. There are probably individuals that should be getting mileage for when they have to go somewhere. And they should just drive back and forth to work.”
Management tools
To keep track of all its vehicles, the county presently contracts with the company Samsara for telematics software. An initial $269,388 contract in 2019 provided hardware, software, support and maintenance for fleet management. On January 2, 2024 Samsara was contracted for $154,304 more.
By the end of 2023, over 300 vehicles in the county fleet had been equipped with Cloud-based data and GPS tracking which also included annual mileage and fuel-usage numbers.
Another product, Asset Works, tracks acquisition date, cost, maintenance cost, vehicle type, green-fleet status, assigned department, assigned staff member if used as a take-home vehicle, and date of assignment.
Vehicle mileage, user and department information are racked with WexOnline, a credit-card procurement system that allows drivers to purchase fuel at commercial service stations.
The fleet review committee seems eager to get on with greening the operation, tracking the usage, and rightsizing the fleet. Maloney certainly is.
“If you go back pre-charter, we had a lot more transparency and information with regard to the approving of purchasing vehicles,” Maloney said. “It got to a point where last year we had one resolution that literally stated: 55 vehicles, two or four million dollars, yes or no? And who was getting these vehicles, what were they being used for? I just think it’s gotten a little out of hand.”
Gone are the Ford Tauruses and Chevy Malibus of yesteryear. In 2023, 22 new vehicles out of 50 entered into service replacing 52 mostly passenger vehicles. Nine were zero-emission. Twenty-eight good old fuel-combustion vehicles, and the remaining 13 somewhere in between.
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