County officials discuss who should do vehicle maintenance
By GAYLE WEBER
To some extent, routine maintenance on county vehicles already is being taken care of in the Ellis County shop. But county commissioners don't agree on where further maintenance should be done.
"If we have mechanics available, I don't know why we're not using our own mechanics," Commissioner Glenn Diehl said.
Diehl believes if maintenance on county vehicles can be scheduled in the public works department, it should be, rather than using outside vendors.
However, EMS Director Kerry McCue and Rural Fire Director Dick Klaus said there might be times the county shop wouldn't have time to work on the emergency vehicles for their departments.
"I need to get my equipment in and out because I can't have a fire truck down very long," Klaus said.
He takes the trucks to mechanics only for major repairs because rural fire crews maintain the trucks otherwise. Klaus said his trucks still would have to go to specially certified mechanics for pump problems and annual vehicle inspections because the county does not have anyone that could do either.
However, the public works department does help out other county departments when possible. For example, it performs routine maintenance on the appraiser's vehicles and assists county vehicles when they are stranded out of town.
"I don't mind doing the work," Public Works Administrator Mike Graf said. "We help out the departments when we can and when they've needed us to. I just don't want to sacrifice our department."
And that could be the case if the county shop becomes responsible for emergency repairs on vehicles outside the public works department. But Commissioner Perry Henman doesn't believe that's necessary.
"Our mechanics aren't just sitting around waiting for the work," Henman said. "I don't want to hire another mechanic to do oil changes."
Plus, Henman said, the county departments such as EMS and Rural Fire give local mechanics business.
But commissioners came to no conclusion Monday night, opting instead to encourage using county mechanics for routine maintenance if they have the time to complete the task.
"I don't know that we need to overload (that) department," Commission Chairman Vernon Berens said. "I think we just need to proceed that if we can help out, fine. But I want to be careful with that."