Trustees Drive Talks on Take-Home Village Vehicles

The spends roughly $6,072 per year on four take-home vehicles for employees. It spends an additional $9,600 on vehicle allowances for three other staff members who use their own cars to drive to work.

Next month, trustees will start discussing in earnest whether to cut back on these expenses, or eliminate them all together.

At Wednesday’s meeting of the finance committee (which includes all six village trustees), Finance Director Jeff Zoephel laid out just how much of a savings the village would see.

Montgomery provides take-home vehicles to the public works director, the police chief and two other members of the police department, and Zoephel’s annual total for those cars is based on estimated fuel costs: $3,484 for the public works vehicle, $661 for the police chief, and $1,298 and $629 for the other two police vehicles, he said.

Additionally, the village manager gets $7,200 a year in vehicle expenses, as guaranteed by contract, while the finance director and community development director each get $1,200 a year.

The village does provide a pool of cars for employees to use, and Village Manager Anne Marie Gaura said it is in Montgomery’s best interest to do so, because the village’s insurance will cover them if they are in an accident while conducting business.

Trustees asked why the village pays fuel costs for the four take-home cars, and Gaura replied that it is industry standard to do so. She pointed to a comparison study Zoephel conducted, looking at the neighboring villages of North Aurora, Oswego and Sugar Grove.

Zoephel said all these villages offer take-home cars to their police chiefs and public works directors, although the policies vary from there.

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.

Trustee Stan Bond asked Police Chief Daniel Meyers how his job would be affected if his take-home village vehicle were not available to him. Meyers said he is “on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” and should an emergency arise, he would not be able to respond to it directly—he’d have to stop at the police station first to pick up his car and equipment.

Additionally, he said, overtime costs for the two officers with vehicles—one a detective, one a detective sergeant—would increase if they could not respond directly to calls with take-home vehicles.

Public Works Director Mike Pubentz gave a similar reason, saying he is sometimes called in to work for snow emergencies and other situations. He said it is 45 miles from his home to his office.

Trustee Andy Kaczmarek said he is in favor of eliminating take-home vehicles and vehicle allowances, and using the money saved to repair more roads per year. But other trustees said they would like to discuss the issue more.

“I think there’s enough concern to say the policy needs to be revisited,” said Trustee Bill Keck, the committee chairman.

But one, Trustee Denny Lee, expressed disbelief that the discussion was happening at all.

“$661 for gas for a year (for the police chief's vehicle)? That’s what we’re talking about?” he said. “I don’t know what we’re talking about $600 for. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

Trustees will take up the issue next month, at the August committee of the whole meeting.