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Highlands Today

AP Council Holds off on Vehicle Policy

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By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: May 12, 2008

Updated: 05/13/2008 02:54 pm

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AVON PARK — A dozen Avon Park police officers crowded the council chambers, ready to protest a possible decision to stop them from taking their police cruisers home.

They didn't need to do anything but wear their white Southwest Florida Police Benevolent Association shirts Monday evening, as the council postponed a vote on the policy for another month.

It dodged a showdown with the officers as well as with the city's public works foremen, arguing that the newly hired Avon Park Police Chief Matthew Doughney needed at least a month to create his own plans on the issue. The police department uses the majority of city vehicles although other departments like public works also have city vehicles.

"Give the chief time to get settled in," Council member Joe Wright told City Manager Sarah Adelt.

Adelt has been suggesting that the city revise its vehicle take-home policy, allowing only the police chief, the fire chief and one on-call public works foreman to take a city-owned vehicle home in order to tighten the city's budget. Currently, anybody can take a vehicle home if they live within 10 miles of the Avon Park city limits, even though non-police employees had to pay $3 per day to do it.

Mayor Sharon Schuler also suggested creating a separate policy for the police department from the rest of the city, even though she did not elaborate on it during the meeting.

Avon Park Police Cmdr. Michael Rowan, while acting as the police chief, prepared a study and turned it over to the council in response to a mileage chart the city presented to him, which didn't match up with his calculations.

According to the study, the current vehicle policy would cost the city about $56,700 under the city's calculations, but only about $16,300 by Rowan's estimates. The study said the discrepancy was because the city assumed every officer worked five eight-hour shifts a week, while his study assumed his road patrol worked 15 days a month on 12-hour shifts.

Rowan's study included a request to keep the current vehicle policy until the discrepancy was cleared, but he and the other officers were not the only ones complaining. Public Works Foreman Alfred Hodge told the council that he takes his city-issued vehicle home and that it makes it quicker for him to reach an emergency, sometimes covering hazards also handled by the police.

Neither Rowan, Doughney nor any of the officers commented during the meeting, but afterward, all of them said they were happy to see the delay.

"The support from the City Council was great," said David Sass, an Avon Park police officer and the department's representative for the Southwest Florida Police Benevolent Association.

"This is a budgetary crisis," Doughney added, after suggesting that he'll try to create a bicycle patrol within the department. "There's ways to save fuel."

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