This is simple.
The Inspector General
reports that the city administration is using 273 take-home vehicles. City ordinance allows a maximum of 60. If the administration eliminated 200+ vehicles from the fleet, it could save nearly a million bucks per year.
Yes, I acknowledge that
this has been going on a long time. Nagin's not the first to do this. And, yes, I acknowledge that
273 is less excessive than 450. But still, now that this excess is on the table... let's deal with it!
Get the numbers in line immediately, and there will be less spazzing about some of the employees who were obviously abusing the take home car policy and gas cards:
[A] Safety and Permits Department official was caught by a television station with four city vehicles in his driveway. The official later stated in an internal memo that he considered one vehicle unreliable, another was a new car to replace the older one, a third he was using while another employee was ill and the fourth had not been assigned yet.
After Nagin promptly reduces the administration's take-home vehicle count by 200+ vehicles, as I'm sure he will (*wink*), the city should sell those vehicles to a
Car Share service that wants to do business in town. This isn't difficult. Let's just handle it, and take similar measures at the NOPD, Aviation Board, Civil Sheriff, Criminal Sheriff and Sewerage and Water Board, if need be.
---
Update: What
mominem said, especially about Nagin's "newfound gradualism".
---
*Labels: cars, Nagin
4 Comments:
I'm looking forward to the report on the Criminal Sheriff's two 28ft sportfishing yachts. Does someone get to take those home (and to Grand Isle)?
Yes, I acknowledge that this has been going on a long time. Nagin's not the first to do this. And, yes, I acknowledge that 273 is less excessive than 450.
First off, I'd have to question that 450 -- Nagin's a pro at using numbers out of context. Best example I can think of off the top of my head was during his first term he constantly bragged about cutting the city budget by comparing his first term budget to budgets from the nineties that included millions of dollars for airport land acquisition. Who knows when that 450 figure comes from, or if it includes the departments that were excluded from the report.
Also, Stacy Head made the valid point on WWL this morning that low pay was used to justify the take home cars in the past, but that's no longer a justification.
I feel a little like Les Miles in terms of clock management, I had a half hour to post this morning, took forty minutes and left out one of the main points I wanted to make. Not that big a point, but I intended to contrast the "only fifteen" employees with the the nine in Nagin's personal $1.2M PR department -- 9 full times staffers (apparently averaging close to six figures) plus a healthy contract to an outside firm.
There are no records of the time before Katrina. It's in Cerasoli's report.
The 273 does not include a lot large of departments the city controls, things like the airport, Sewerage and Water board and a number of other rich organizations like the French Market Corporation. The number now could easily be 450 or more.
I also don't believe a thing Nagin says.
What makes this worse is the fact that I have to imagine that a very large number of cars flooded, thus how many are post-K purchases?
