BonnerSprings.com

The rising cost of gasoline prices has been rough on many people the last few months, but it’s becoming more of a burden for public entities that make many community services possible.

For the city of Bonner Springs and School District 204, the cost of gasoline is bringing about the question: How do you save money on fuel while still maintaining the services a community needs?

As far as the city goes, Rita Hoag, city clerk, said that no cuts to the Tiblow Transit or individual departmental transportation had been made at this point, but changes are taking place to keep costs down.

“We haven’t scaled back, but we’ve taken measures to make sure we coordinate trips,” she said. “Instead of going out to pick up one thing, we’re trying to coordinate to get supplies all in one trip.”

That goes for Tiblow Transit as well. Hoag said the city has asked drivers to organize their route schedule so that, for example, if a person needs to be picked up from Wal-Mart and another person needs to be picked up at Morse Street and taken to Wal-Mart, that the driver picks up the person on Morse first.

“That’s just an efficient use of taxpayers’ dollars,” Hoag said. “That’s something we should always do, but we just have more incentive now.”

Tillie LaPlante, Bonner Springs finance director, said that through the month of April the city has spent 43.3 percent of its 2008 budgeted expenditures for fuel, which means $55,593 of the $128,369 fuel budget has been spent.

LaPlante said the city tried to budget more in the 2008 budget because staff realized fuel prices were on the rise. In 2007 the total fuel and supply budget was $110,700 and the city spent $140,294. LaPlante said when the city makes its 2009 budget, once again, more would have to be budgeted to keep up with the rising costs.

The City Council will have its first discussions on the 2009 budget 6:30 p.m., May 19 at the South Park Community Room.

If the city were to stay on budget for 2008, only 33.3 percent of the fuel budget should have been used through April. That means the city is 10 percent over budget for the first four months of the year.

“A 10 percent difference doesn’t alarm me,” LaPlante said. “We budget some contingency just in case of unexpected costs.”

She also said that there could be other factors that have affected how much of the fuel budget has been used. She said a possible increase in the number of ambulance calls could cause that too, which is something that, she said, obviously just couldn’t be helped.

“We’re just telling our employees to think smart about fuel usage,” she said. “Everyone’s doing it at home and I think that thought also carries over to work.”

At the school district, Superintendent Robert Van Maren said the district has definitely been noticing a strain on the cost of transportation.

“The main thing is that it’s costing us a whole lot of money,” he said.

One reason, Van Maren ventured, was that USD 204 allows more field trips than many districts. While no changes have been made concerning that fact so far, he said he’s had discussions with school administrators about ideas for managing fuel costs.

“We may have to limit those (field) trips, which is not something we want to do,” he said.

For now, he said, the district was trying to spend money on transportation rather than other things. His main concern is for next year’s budget, however, because the state will only be giving schools a 1 percent increase in funding he said.

“I don’t know what we’ll do if gas goes up another 20 percent,” he said.

Debbie Elmer, transportation director for the school district, said that through the month of April, the district has spent about $17,106 on fuel, which is $5,118 over what was spent this time last year at $11,988.

In April 2007, the cost was about $2.60 per gallon of gas, and this year the cost is about $3.71 per gallon Elmer said. That $1.11 increase has the district searching for ways to cut back.

“At this point there’s not a whole lot you can do when you still have to provide a service to your community,” Elmer said.

Still, Elmer has found two ways so far to cut back. The first involves the large buses that can fit a range of 65 to 71 passengers. While nothing is changing about the 14 daily routes buses take to pick up and drop off students from school, Elmer said they are trying something new when it comes to transportation to special activities.

“We’re running (the buses) tighter than we used to to try to save everywhere we can,” she said, adding that buses are being packed as full as they can within legal limits and still keeping in mind the comfort of different age groups and the amount of room they need.

Her second attack on fuel prices came with the purchase of a Nissan minivan to replace one of the district’s large vans. This saves money because the gas mileage the minivan gets is almost double that of the other, larger vans, Elmer said. While she recognizes that the minivans don’t provide as much storage room for equipment, she said in the long run it’s worth it and hopes to replace more of the large vans with minivans.

An added bonus with the purchase was that the minivans can also be used for driver education classes. Elmer said this would save the district the cost of leasing cars for the classes.

Whatever changes she makes, however, Elmer said that the 2009 budget would have to reflect the fact that fuel costs are on the rise with no end in sight.

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1. 20 May 2008 at 8:42 p.m.

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   travelinman (Anonymous) says…

   To bad the school district can't fund a special education department in our own community rather than shipping kids clear into 9th and Quindeo when they want to get rid of them. Maybe that would save them a few bucks.

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