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Rising fuel prices squeeze county funds By Philip Jankowski Commissioners OK $480,000 to cover unbudgeted fuel costs Williamson County Commissioners’ Court approved more than $480,000 in emergency spending Tuesday dedicated solely to rising gasoline and diesel prices. The vast majority, $450,000, was earmarked for the Road and Bridge Fund, which operates a fleet of large construction vehicles that guzzle diesel. The rest of the money was transferred to county constables, with $15,000 going to Pct. 4 Constable Marty Ruble’s office. Ruble said the fuel problems are widespread, with emergency and non-emergency departments alike. “Like everybody else, the commissioners do a very good job of estimating what the cost will be each year, but nobody could forecast what would happen to us in the last two years,” Ruble said. “We expected a modest increase. We didn’t expect it to go to $3 and then $4.” Ruble said he budgeted for $28,000 worth of fuel expenses this year, after spending $29,503 last year. He said he expected prices to remain relatively stable this year. Next year he is asking for $37,000. “Hopefully things work right so we can stay inside that deal, but if they go up, we may not,” Ruble said. Commissioners made a number of suggestions while discussing the emergency spending, including reducing the number of take-home vehicles and creating work-related car pools for county vehicles, but when it came to the Road and Bridge vehicles, the court was largely stumped, unable to come up with a viable solution for reducing the amount of run time for the county’s construction crews. However, the court did bring up the possibility of changing the Road and Bridge Department’s work week to four days, which may decrease fuel consumption by reducing the amount of times the vehicles have to be started and warmed up each week. That item was not on the agenda, so County Judge Dan Gattis said they should not discuss the four-day work week in depth and wait for it to get on the agenda. He did say that it was a priority that needed to be examined quickly. “I think all of our departments are trying real hard to reduce consumption,” Gattis said. Money for the Road and Bridge Fund will come from the county’s general fund, but the money for constables’ cruisers comes from revenue created by the department. Officers in the constables offices sometimes are employed by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) outside of scheduled work hours to provide safety vehicles for construction areas. Ruble said TxDOT pays the county $12 an hour for having a cruiser on the scene, while the officer gets an additional wage. The $15,000 came from money generated by cruisers sitting at construction sites, ironically burning fuel to create money for more fuel. Usually $30 to $40 worth of fuel is burned in a typical construction assignment, but $80 to $100 in profit for the county is gained. If the department does not use all of money allocated from that fund it will go back to the county. Ruble said the department is working to cut fuel use. His deputies will now turn their cars off if they foresee being out of their car for an extended period of time conducting interviews or serving papers. Still, with Precinct 4 comprising 47 percent of the county, the department faces more challenges than other precincts. “I have the largest geographic area and I’m the No. 1 process server in county, and right now we’ve served roughly 1,000 more papers than my counterparts ... and we’re still not the highest budget,” he said.
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