Reno City Council members on Wednesday heard the findings of an internal audit of take-home vehicles, which revealed a number of problems with the city’s current practices.
Emily Kidd, the city’s internal auditor, said the purpose of the audit was to assess compliance with city policies and best practices. The biggest finding was that documented policies and procedures for take-home vehicles do not exist, according to the audit report.
The city owns around 750 vehicles, with more than a quarter—199—used as take-home vehicles. Those are driven by employees across seven departments including code and parking enforcement; development services; fire; maintenance and operations; municipal court; police; and utility services.
The majority of take-home vehicles are used by police, accounting for 160 of the 199 vehicles.
“Using taxpayer funds without documented internal controls and process standards is not within best practices.”City of Reno Audit
Other findings in the audit centered around city staff not following vehicle policies included elsewhere in city rules. The city’s fleet management is meant to review and provide plans as to where city vehicles will be parked and stored, but that is not taking place.
Employees are also required to sign documents indicating they understand that take-home vehicles are not to be used for personal purposes. Kidd also said that is not happening.
The city’s vehicle policy notes vehicles should only be taken home if the employee is on-call, is required to provide immediate emergency response outside of working hours, or there is not adequate, secure storage for the vehicle at the place of work.
Audit findings show that for many individuals who take home city vehicles, there is ample parking at their place of business, which negates the need to be issued a take-home vehicle.
Telemetrics, a fleet management tool used by many organizations, can track vehicle use, service and other data. Kidd said the tool is used “sparsely throughout the fleet inventory” despite being a best practice for reducing risk and improving efficiency. Of the city’s fleet of vehicles, just 35 maintenance and operations vehicles have GPS telemetrics, and 112 police vehicles have GPS with cameras.
“The City is unnecessarily incurring fuel costs for employees that have been authorized to commute with a city-owned vehicle.”City of Reno Audit
Kidd told council members that just within the Reno Police Department (RPD) there are 12 vehicles being used by employees who commute more than 30 miles to the RPD headquarters, costing the city over $32,000 each year in fuel costs, plus wear and tear on the cars.
The Center for Public Safety Management (CPSM) audited RPD’s operations and issued a report in January 2022. That report recommended instituting a cap of 25 miles from city limits for take-home vehicles.
The current audit found that when employees are using city-owned vehicles to commute, the city might be held liable for workers’ compensation expenses, as well as taking on an increased risk of city-owned vehicle crashes and vehicle repair costs.
RPD Assistant Chief Ollie Miller said the department is working on policy updates to address many of these issues, including those identified in the CPSM report and Kidd’s internal audit.
City Manager Doug Thornley said he looked forward to seeing RPD policies that might result from the audits. He said the scope of the audits was “commendable and overdue.”
“Mr. Manager, any comments on this yourself since this really lands at your feet?” Council member Naomi Duerr asked. “It sounds like about half of the vehicles are not within the police department, are elsewhere.”
“That’s true, but I think the most pointed space that we’re focused on is there at the police department, so we’re gonna focus there first and we’ll get after the rest of them after that,” Thornley responded.
