Trustees to Talk Employee Vehicles

Should the village provide vehicles and driving expenses for its employees?  Or would cutting those expenses help save money, and provide more services?

Trustees will tackle that question tonight, in their first meeting of July. The village currently provides four vehicles – one for the public works director, one for the police chief, and two others for police sergeants. The village also pays a vehicle allowance to three other employees: the village manager, the finance director, and the community development director.

Village Manager Anne Marie Gaura gets $7,200 per year for vehicle expenses, according to her contract. The totals for the other employees, and the annual costs of maintaining the four employee vehicles, were not released Tuesday.

Finance Director Jeff Zoephel did release the results of a comparison study he conducted, looking at how the villages of North Aurora, Oswego and Sugar Grove handle the same issue. All the surveyed villages offer cars to their police chiefs and public works directors, he said, but from there the policies vary.

Oswego also offers take-home vehicles to its village administrator, its deputy police chief and its assistant public works director. The village gives no vehicle allowances to those using their own cars. North Aurora provides cars to a police lieutenant and the water supervisor, but also does not offer vehicle allowances. And Sugar Grove does grant its village administrator an allowance, but no other employees.

Two months ago, Trustee Andy Kaczmarek suggested eliminating all take-home village vehicles, or keeping them within the village limits. Doing so, he said, could save the village thousands.

On Tuesday, Kaczmarek said he would still like to see those perks eliminated, and the money saved funneled into capital improvements, including street repair.

But Trustee Matt Brolley said Tuesday that eliminating vehicles and vehicle allowances for existing employees would essentially be cutting their pay.

“I would need to hear a just reason for doing that,” Brolley said.

Brolley said he would like to see Kaczmarek’s two suggestions – eliminating the vehicles and allowances, and keeping those vehicles within village limits – treated as two separate issues. Some employees live outside Montgomery, and he said any solution to this issue “needs to be fair to everyone.”

Trustee Stan Bond said he does consider providing vehicles and allowances an area in which the village could save money, though he said he would not make up his mind until hearing all the facts during the meeting.

Bond said he understands and has no problem with members of the police department using village vehicles, since they may need to respond to emergencies at all hours of the day. But he said he doesn’t see the same logic applying to other positions.

Employees, he said, could drive their own cars to work, and then check out a village vehicle from an available pool of them to conduct their business.

Bond said he is “not anxious to disrupt the lives of people who made plans around the compensation packages they thought they had,” but added that the taxpayers want their trustees to look at trimming expenses such as this one.

The finance committee, which includes all six members of the Village Board, will meet tonight at 6:30 p.m. at Village Hall.