Date: February 20, 2023
Author: Carla McKeown
Location:Breckenridge, TX
“The Breckenridge city leaders expect to save more than $300,000 over the next 10 years by contracting with Enterprise Fleet Management to handle the City’s vehicles.
The City Commissioners approved a proposed contract with Enterprise, in addition to taking action on several other items at their Feb. 7 meeting.
“Essentially, what this is going to do is really give us a holistic approach to approaching our fleet maintenance, which we’ve kind of been very disjointed,” Breckenridge City Manager Cynthia Northrop said about the deal with Enterprise. “So in the end, at the end of the day, it’s going to save us money. It’s going to improve our community image. And there’s some other benefits, too.”
Rami Saad with Enterprise Fleet Management in Fort Worth talked to the commissioners, explaining the program. The parent company is Enterprise Holdings, which also owns Enterprise-Rent-A-Car, he said.
The City of Breckenridge currently handles vehicles the same way that many other cities do, which is to buy vehicles and drive them for as long as they can, until they break down, Saad said. Half of the City’s light- and medium-duty vehicles are 10 years old or older, and four Breckenridge Police Department vehicles are non-operational.
“Older vehicles have higher fuel costs, they’re more costly to maintain, they’re less reliable, they lack safety features that are becoming standard in new vehicles, and at the end of the day, not quite as efficient as you want them to be,” Saad said. “And … (that) leads to an inconsistent and a reactive fleet budget. And reactive is a key word; we want to be proactive. And we want to make decisions on when to replace vehicles, not allow the vehicles to dictate when they’re replaced, which is they get broken down and now we replace it.”
With the Enterprise system, the City will use an open-end lease structure to purchase vehicles. Saad described it as a “partial finance,” rather than a lease like a consumer has with a dealership. “So we’re taking the vehicle; we’re financing it down to a book value, so there’s a pay-off balance at the end,” he said. “Once we sell it, we cover the balance; there’s positive equity leftover. That equity is yours. There are no mileage restrictions, no charges for wear and tear. It’s just as if you own the vehicle. It’s strictly used as a cash flow tool, so that your capital dollars go further.”
Enterprise has already worked out a schedule on which current vehicles need to be replaced and when. The plan is that the vehicles in the City’s fleet will be replaced every five years. One benefit to replacing the vehicles more often is lowered maintenance costs, Saad said, explaining that Enterprise will use local shops for the work.
The commissioners voted 4-0 in approval of the contract; Mayor Pro-tem Rob Durham was not at the meeting.”
Article Source: https://breckenridgetexan.com/2023/02/20/breckenridge-city-commissioners-agree-to-contract-with-enterprise-fleet-management-for-citys-vehicles/
