44-page audit<\/a> found that more analysis is still necessary.<\/p>\nCity officials agreed to the audit\u2019s key recommendation that every city department do a vehicle-needs assessment to determine how many vehicles it needs now and will need in the future.<\/p>\n
Officials also agreed to create utilization standards to make sure the city doesn\u2019t have more vehicles than it needs and to establish minimum thresholds for the number of vehicles each city department needs.<\/p>\n
While city officials agreed to implement all eight of the audit\u2019s recommendations, they stressed that the decision to rent versus buy is complex.<\/p>\n
Challenges that come with owning vehicles are that staffing shortages often delay repairs and that it typically takes two years to get a new vehicle into operation because of delivery delays from vehicle makers and the need to install specialized equipment.<\/p>\n
Officials also noted that the Chollas Operations Yard in southeastern San Diego, where most vehicle repairs and maintenance takes place, is relatively small for the city fleet and needs modernizing.<\/p>\n
San Diego has a fleet of more than 5,000 vehicles with a replacement value approaching $500 million.<\/p>\n
A key finding of the audit was that 56% of city vehicle rentals are for longer than six months, possibly indicating that city officials should consider buying in many of those instances.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city relies on long-term rentals because vehicle planning does not fully account for operational needs, future demand and cost effectiveness,\u201d the audit says.<\/p>\n
Other audit recommendations the city has agreed to implement include dividing up rental contracts by each city department to make it easier to evaluate which departments use rentals the most.<\/p>\n
The city also agreed to monitor vehicle rental expenditures on a quarterly basis and include any large variances in budget updates to the City Council every three months.<\/p>\n
In addition, any request for a rental contract presented to the council must include three years of data on that city department\u2019s use of rental vehicles and an assertion that no city-owned vehicles could be used instead.<\/p>\n
The audit found several instances where city officials rented a vehicle even though they owned a similar vehicle that wasn\u2019t being used.<\/p>\n
The council approved a new citywide rental contract last fall with a maximum outlay of $66.5 million.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s recent cost-benefit analysis, which was presented to the council\u2019s budget committee in June, found that it makes sense to buy most ordinary vehicles and rent some highly specialized vehicles.<\/p>\n
Those specialized vehicles include bulldozers, water trucks, excavation trucks and mini-dump trucks.<\/p>\n
The analysis also said more information and evaluation is needed to determine whether some vehicle types should be rented or bought. They include ordinary SUVs, flatbed trailers and skid-steer loaders.<\/p>\n
The audit praised the city for the cost-benefit analysis, but still calls for more analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditional steps are needed to improve the city\u2019s vehicle planning process to understand how many vehicles departments need to meet daily service demands and reduce reliance on long-term rentals,\u201d the audit says.<\/p>\n
The audit notes that the city uses eight years as the expected life of a dump truck but that the city typically uses dump trucks for 13 years. If the city assumed dump trucks last 13 years instead of eight, it would make buying them a much smarter decision, the audit says.<\/p>\n
The audit praises city officials for accelerating the process of getting new vehicles into operation by standardizing how specialized equipment, such as special computers in police cars,\u00a0gets installed.<\/p>\n
Rolando Charvel, the city\u2019s chief financial officer, and Bethany Bezak, one of Mayor Todd Gloria\u2019s top aides, said in a joint response that the audit\u2019s recommendations could make a difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cManagement agrees that effective planning, monitoring, and coordination are important to ensure vehicle and equipment rental are used appropriately, contract capacity is adequately managed and city resources are used efficiently,\u201d they said in their response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new audit says cash-strapped San Diego could be overspending on rental cars because city officials don\u2019t adequately…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[23,100,13,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-487954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}