The CEA (Central Equipment Agency) Review Committee met 04/11/2022. This committee meets infrequently, and last convened 08/23/2021.
The first item they took up was the request to downgrade a landscape truck and upgrade a chipper when they are replaced in 2023 It was a straightforward request. They had already planned to downgrade the landscape truck because they didn’t need one with a big diesel engine. In fact, the diesel engine caused problems when it was sitting and idling because there is a regeneration process that needs to happen and they would need to leave a site and drive along the highway for a bit to clear the engine out. They don’t like dealing with those issues and they are not using the truck to tow very many things. The timing worked out well because they had been talking about the need to upsize the chipper for some time. They were hoping to take the savings from reducing the truck and put that toward an upgrade chipper. They would still end up with an overall savings of $1,677.
The committee approved the request 3-0.
The next item was a request to approve 2022 seasonal vehicles. There were no questions and staff had nothing to add to the memo. The committee approved the request 3-0.
The next item was a request to upgrade DPW traffic sedan #492 to an HEV (hybrid electric vehicle) when it is replaced in 2023.
Director of Public Works Paula Vandehey, who was a committee member, said that fellow committee member Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) had not been able to attend the meeting but had asked if there were any concerns with having this vehicle be a hybrid.
Fleet Operation Supervisor Bruce Brazee answered that Appleton’s history with hybrid vehicles in its fleet has been pretty good. Their oldest one is a 2008 vehicle that the Police Department still runs. Life expectancy on a hybrid vehicle battery was 15 – 18 years, but the city wouldn’t keep them that long, so he didn’t see any issue with running hybrids in the fleet. In fact, he thought hybrids would become more popular as the years progressed.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) said she knew there were some issues getting electronic parts for cars and she wondered if that was a concern with hybrid vehicles.
Supervisor Brazee responded that most of the car itself, such as the windows, radio, and heater, were identical to what would be in a regular gas car. The hybrid part was just what propelled the vehicle down the road, and the city has not had issues with the 5 hybrid vehicles currently in their fleet.
Alderperson Van Zeeland said she’d never seen a charging station. Did the city have a charging station or was that something they didn’t need?
Supervisor Brazee said that the city just had hybrid vehicles, and hybrid units have small gas engines that charge their batteries. They are not full electric vehicles.
There were no further questions and the committee approved the request 3-0.
The final action item was a request to purchase a fire truck via sole source and order prior to May 1, 2022.
Director Vandehey made an amendment to clarify that the request was to both order and pre-pay prior to May 1, 2022. She explained that the request actually included three things. The first was to purchase the truck via sole source. The second was to order the truck prior to May 1st. The third was to pre-pay before May 1 so that they could see some additional savings [which, per the memo, would be around $90,000.]
Alderperson Van Zeeland confirmed that this item would also go to the Finance Committee.
Fir Chief Jeremy Hansen added that the fire truck was actually scheduled to be replaced in January of 2023, but by moving the purchase up by 6 months they would be able to avoid the price increases for the vehicle that was known to be scheduled for later this year. There would be a 7% increase in cost after May 1st, and the vendor had indicated that there may be one or two more price increases before the end of the year. They would save at least $55,000 by purchasing the vehicle now. [And that would be in addition to the $35,000 pre-payment discount.]
Director Vandehey’s amendment was approved 3-0, and then the item as amended was approved 3-0.
The committee then moved onto information items.
Committee members had no questions and there was no discussion about the 2022 Equipment Purchase Log.
They moved on to the Proposed 2023 Equipment Replacements.
A city staffer said that they bring this forward ahead of the budget process every year. CEA meets with each department, discusses equipment that’s up for replacement, and talks about what the department’s needs are.
They were holding off on a lot of replacements. If something was up for replacement but both CEA and the department felt that they could run that piece of equipment an additional year, they would hold it.
He said they do quite a bit of that, but “This year we might have done a little less of that because now we know that it takes up to two years to get in a new piece of equipment with the supply chain issues.” Some of the things that were maybe on the fence and that they would have rolled the dice on in previous years and not replaced, were put on the replacement schedule this year due to those supply chain issues. [Vehicle replacement seems like a practical thing that the city’s Covid-grant money should have gone toward given that the price of vehicles and the ability to replace them in a timely manner have been directly impacted by the country’s Covid-response.]
Director Vandehey added that there was a new column on this year’s equipment replacement sheet—the “Hybrid Candidate” column. They wanted to make sure that, as CEA staff met with the different departments, they were making sure to have conversations about which vehicles were likely candidates to be replaced with hybrids. In the past, they hadn’t been that formal about it. This way they could see that it had been considered and what the determination was.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=955169&GUID=34891C33-D65F-4ACC-A041-1183A02808C3
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