Jackson Jambalaya

We have currently four vehicles that are missing, that no one knows where those vehicles are or where they were previously, who they were assigned to. Actually, as we've been doing our inventory assets, the Chief of Staff along with our individual who is assigned to that unit now have literally been driving past garages, spotting our vehicles and recovering those vehicles.

 Foote: I thought we had that. Are you missing any vehicles that you know of?

Director Jones: I'm pretty sure we are.

Foote: Pretty sure we are. Okay.

Director Jones: Yes sir. I don't know what I don't know.

Transcript

Chief Brackney: ...attempting to centralize and alleviate some of that burden off of public works because the vehicles just back up too quickly. The amount of... we're heavy consumers of the garage system, and the garage does not have the capability, capacity to be able to do that work. In addition, the garage does not carry an inventory basically, so we are piecemealing every single part that we order out from either AutoZone, Mike's, a hike's place, radiator places, etc. So we could save a large amount of money, and that's currently something that we're pursuing to centralize our vehicles, our vehicle maintenance, and just even our asset management as we've been able to determine there are quite a few vehicles that are not in the city system that we are uncovering that no one has been able to account for and literally they've showed up as the words 'missing' on the inventory. And we've been able to track those slowly but surely down.

Council Member: Thank you. Chief of Staff Norwood just put her hands up.

Chief Brackney: We have currently four vehicles that are missing, that no one knows where those vehicles are or where they were previously, who they were assigned to. Actually, as we've been doing our inventory assets, the Chief of Staff along with our individual who is assigned to that unit now have literally been driving past garages, spotting our vehicles and recovering those vehicles.

Council Member: Tell them to try to find your hair. [Laughter]

Chief Brackney: It's too soon, sir. I was going... [Laughter] It is way too soon. As to it... and again, we're being very intentional. Again, not only just recovering the vehicles, but what source of money paid for vehicles and who they were distributed to. So that we are making sure that we are in compliance with grants but also with general funds. If you gave us general fund monies for vehicles, were those vehicles actually being distributed within the JPD or were they being distributed throughout the city?

Hartley: Chief, now, you mentioned those four vehicles and that opens up a whole another question here. Is it due to some type of mismanagement? Are they going to a garage that we're not aware of or chop shop? Someone's riding around with a police car, what's... I mean, you're opening up a...

Chief Brackney: I'm going to be very careful the way that I say this. But from the very first point of entry, we just don't have a really good accounting system. And if we want to discuss it further it probably would be a better executive session to do that in.

Hartley: Okay. Thank you. Appreciate your forthrightness and letting us know that. And I think, did we have a discussion earlier about a centralized garage? I thought we had some type of... remember us about perhaps having one big centralized garage for everybody.

Director Jones: And that was my recommendation. If you give police a million dollars to have their garage, you give fire department whatever 1.5 million to do their garage...

Hartley: They got different vehicles.

Director Jones: Right, if our vehicles... if our fleet is $800,000 and you expect us to take care of all these things and you're outsourcing... why don't you spend that million dollars? If you're outsourcing a million dollars, bring it in-house and centralize it. I think you would save more money. Now, if we starting talking about time... Chief is right about inventory. I had the same... She was very nice about it. But I had the same thing about, we need to do a better job of inventory and knowing where vehicles are. This was over years and years and years of inventory. We need to have a system where it's centralized, you come in, you get checked out, we tell you you need your oil change. Right now it's more of like the wild wild west where people just get their oil changed when they want to. It needs to be systemized where, I've been in systems where they call you and tell you you need to come and get your oil changed on this day. It's documented. In 2021, I know I had a transmission changed on that vehicle and it's linked to the vehicle number. And next 10, 20 years you'll have your inventory on that, and I think that needs to be centralized and not siloed in different departments.

Council Member: I thought we had that. Are you missing any vehicles that you know of?

Director Jones: I'm pretty sure we are.

Council Member: Pretty sure we are. Okay.

Director Jones: Yes sir. I don't know what I don't know.

Hartley: Well, what we're talking about is some type of inventory system, and maintenance software. I thought we had approved something like that within the last couple years.

Ms. Caldwell: Excuse me, Council President, I just want the second Parkerson... motion.

Hartley: Oh, it was... yeah it's on the table. What was the motion? The motion was concerning pulling some money from Public Works and placing it in JPD. That's what was on the table and that's what's still on the table. Ms. Caldwell, can you add anything to illuminate this issue?

Ms. Caldwell: Yes, as far as the system, our financial system Tyler Munis, it can track all of those charges for the vehicles, even when we were discussing building improvements. The software will track all of that, we just have to use it. And so I think, now that we have a new administration on board, we can reach out to them for some training of whoever will be responsible for managing that, but we have the capability within our current system to track all of those things related to vehicles and buildings.

Hartley: And I think we need to put that to use immediately, and perhaps in our committee meetings we can bring that up. Certainly within Public Works I plan on having that on the agenda as well.

Director Jones: We need something more advanced I would say... Yeah, we need something more advanced than just dedicated to vehicle inventory. We had a RFQ in IT, that was part of a proposal to update a more advanced... Munis is more like financial. We need more inventory-related. And to the question about... I still don't know the amount that's pulled from Public Works. I think I need to know what are we pulling from Public Works and adding to Police.

Hartley: Yeah, Ms. Caldwell, do we have any information...?