Commissioners discuss purchase of new vehicle for assessor’s office

​YORK – About a year ago, the county purchased a new vehicle to be used for a variety of reasons but predominantly for the veterans service office and the assessor’s office.
The veterans service office provides rides for veterans to and from appointments to the VA and other purposes, while the assessor’s office uses the vehicle to go out in the field to do property inspections, permitting visits, etc.
That particular vehicle was also intended to be used by any county staff member who might need to travel to a convention, training, etc.
During the budget process, York County Assessor Kurt Bulgrin asked for the purchase of another new vehicle.
“When I requested it, I thought it could be purchased using ARPA (federal COVID relief) funds or it could come out of the inheritance fund,” Bulgrin told the commissioners this past week. “Now, I see you are planning to designate the rest of the ARPA funds for paving projects this year, so it could still come out of the inheritance fund.
“Looking at our needs, we are getting behind on inspections,” Bulgrin said. “We have 300 open residential permits and 39 commercial. Plus there are our regular trips into the field to look at properties. With our agreement with the veterans service office, it was that they would coordinate usage but it has become difficult for us to use the vehicle is that we don’t know when it will be available. The VSO’s usage sometimes is last minute and they don’t always necessarily know when it will need to be used for veterans.
“Before you purchased the Equinox (the vehicle used now), we had been using the old white car retired by the York County Sheriff’s Department which had really high mileage and it had issues,” Bulgrin said. “Then the Equinox was purchased and the usage has been a lot higher of that new vehicle than the old one.”
Bulgrin gave the commissioners a log showing how much the existing Equinox is used as well as details from other assessors from comparable counties regarding whether or not they have their own vehicles designated for county work.
“I asked the other assessors to get an idea of how other counties operate,” Bulgrin said. “Most have a vehicle to use. You know, not long ago I was sitting where you are (as a county commissioner) and I know how important it is to watch spending, so it wasn’t lightheartedly that I made this request.”
“When the Equinox was purchased, it was decided it should be available to all county offices,” said Commissioner Chairman Randy Obermier. “If this other vehicle were to be purchased, I’d like it to also be available in the same way. Now if you already had something lined up, that would be priority.”
Bulgrin said he agreed a new vehicle should also be available to all county staff members when needed.
“We knew when you took over the assessor’s office, a lot of modernizing needed to happen,” Obermier said to Bulgrin, noting purchases and contracts which have changed in the past two years. “If this was to happen, with a vehicle, could we feel the assessor’s office is on track? Basically, will this be it for a while, as far as new expenses?”
Bulgrin said that would be the case, with the exception of some software updates that will have to be done in four to five years.
“We have done a lot of vehicles this year,” said Commissioner Andy Bowman, referencing purchases for other departments. He asked how many miles are on retired cruisers from the sheriff’s department.
“They hit about 150,000 miles, but those aren’t normal usage miles,” Obermier responded. “And to my knowledge, we don’t have any spare cruisers sitting around right now.”
“With the amount of miles and the usage on those cars, I don’t want people using those old cruisers, but this request is a lot of money for a vehicle on which there won’t be a lot of miles being put on,” Bowman said.
“My fear is one of the two vehicles will be sitting in the lot not getting used,” said Commissioner Daniel Grotz. “And would we be buying a car just to ease up the scheduling task? Is there a better way of scheduling, to better use the new vehicle we already purchased? Would you agree the majority of your use would be on certain days?”
“Soon we will start doing field work for 2026,” Bulgrin said. “We send out postcards to folks saying we will be in your area soon, so we have a general idea of when we would be using it to go out in the field. And during protest season, it is good to go out and check out the properties in question. And when it comes to damaged/destroyed properties, we need to go out and inspect them all – this year there was only one due to a house fire but in 2022 there were a lot of properties which had been destroyed by the hail and tornado.”
“I don’t know how far in advance the VSO requests come in, and I see if you have the vehicle reserved and they suddenly have to use it, it hinders the operations of your office,” Grotz said.
“We would certainly use the county vehicle more if it was available,” Bulgrin added.
“Another question is if it would be possible to pay mileage to the volunteer veteran drivers if the county is now available?” Grotz asked.
“According to this log, it is obvious the veterans service office uses the vehicle a lot more often,” said Commissioner Jack Sikes. “And a lot of these trips are not scheduled ahead of time. I think we need to purchase another car. This is not something we will purchase every year, it probably would last 10 years or more.”
Obermier asked Commissioner LeRoy Ott if he had an opinion on the requested purchase.
“Everybody has said everything,” Ott said. “It costs a lot but it’s hard for them to schedule using that vehicle.”
“The biggest month of use was only 14 entries,” Bowman responded.
“Are there days it just sits there?” Ott asked.
“There are days,” Bulgrin said.
“It’s not uncommon for counties our size to have more vehicles and when I sign off on the mileage for those employees who use their own vehicles to do county business, I see those amounts,” Obermier said. “So if we did this purchase, we would have to highly encourage everyone using this car. These vehicles aren’t cheap. And it would be nice to see if it could be stored inside so it lasts longer. The reason I put this on the agenda was for us to have a good discussion about this.”
“I checked into the state bidding process for this, as that process saves money for the taxpayers,” Bulgrin said. “And as Jack (Sikes) said, this will last at least 10 years if not more. And as far as using personal vehicles in the field, I’m not sure if NIRMA (the county’s property insurance carrier) has an opinion about that.”
“If you have more questions, reach out,” Obermier said to his fellow board members. “We will take action on this at a future meeting.”