FLEET FOCUS
Volume 17, Issue 2
March
LOWER FUEL PRICES IMPACT MANY
It’s been nice for drivers to fill up their
tanks at the lowest cost in years. But a 40 percent
decline in oil prices over the last half of the year is
bad news for energy-producing states.
In New Mexico, for example, every dollar
drop in the price of a barrel of oil means $7.5
million less for the state’s general fund. “It adds up
pretty quick,” said David Abbey, who directs the
Legislative Finance Committee. “When prices are
falling like a brick, we can’t lower our estimates
fast enough.”
Abbey notes that his state – along with
other oil and gas states such as North Dakota and
Texas – devotes most of its oil revenues to
permanent funds, which have billions of dollars in
reserves. Capital outlays may be delayed and
there could be less money for education or debt
service, but money socked away when things
were flush will keep those states from having to
impose deep cuts right away. “They can weather
these short term swings easily,” said Norton
Francis, a state tax policy expert at the Urban
continued on page 2
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
1
Lower Fuel Prices Impact Many
2
Do I really need to know this? (aka trivia)
3
Lee Tran’s New Facility
4
Trivia Question and Last Month’s Answer
4
Quotable Quotes
2015
EQUIPMENT REPLACEMENT FORM IS
GOING ELECTRONIC
The forms used by County departments to
request new and replacement vehicles and
equipment are going electronic. The creative staff
at ITG is working on a system similar to the one
used to request and track agenda items for the
Board of County Commissioners. We hope to
have it ready for beta testing within the month and
ready for general consumption in May 2015.
How will it work? The requestor will enter
same information as on the current form into a
computer program and then forward it “up the
food chain” to the people in their department that
need to review/approve the request. This would
include supervisors, department director, fiscal
staff and County Management. This is similar to
the way it is done now but the requestor will be
able to tell exactly where in the process their
request is.
In the past, Departments have contacted
Fleet staff wanting to know how soon their vehicle
will arrive but Fleet hasn’t even received the
paperwork. Often, they can’t determine where the
hold-up is.
Once the request arrives at Fleet, the
department will know if it’s in the spec writing
stage, on order, going in front of the Board, or
waiting for more information.
Fleet Focus p. 1
continued from page 1
Institute. “The problem comes when this price
stays low for a long time.”
Declining oil revenues are the cause of
more than half of Louisiana’s $171 billion budget
shortfall, which has already led to spending
freezes and the elimination of state jobs. The
situation is worse in Alaska. The state depends
on oil for more than 90 percent of its general fund
revenues and forecast the highest oil prices of
any state when it set its budget. Oil revenues
were already going to drop due to a tax cut, but
the steep fall in prices has saddled the state with
a $3.5 billion shortfall.
Diminished oil revenues are thus
compounding budget problems that persist in
many states, despite the overall economic
recovery. Kansas is projecting $1 billion in
shortfalls during the current fiscal year and next.
“In Kansas, that’s another $5 million that they
don’t have,” said Francis, referring to the state’s
losses with every dollar drop in oil prices.
He said states like Kansas might
ultimately be hurt the most. The major oil states
such as Texas have been socking away billions in
permanent or rainy day funds for years, if not
generations. (Alaska had $14.7 billion in its
reserve funds at the end of November.) They can
ride out the price drop, which is expected to
persist through 2015. It’s the states that get a little
extra help from oil that haven’t saved as much
and therefore are going to miss the money that’s
not coming in that much more. “Swings make
them more vulnerable,” Francis said. “If they’re
already in a precarious position like Kansas, even
a small swing in oil money causes problems.”
A version of this story appeared in the February
2015 print issue of Governing.
FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS
Danny Schultz
Joan Crawford
Carlos Cruz
Dennis Quaid
March 23
March 23
April 9
April 9
DO I REALLY NEED TO KNOW THIS?
** Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and jailed in
1956 while leading the Montgomery Alabama bus
boycott. His crime? Driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone.
Four days later, King’s house was bombed. The
boycott was organized to protest segregation on the
city’s buses.
** Sportsman’s Park, home to the St. Louis Cardinals,
was the first sports venue to sell its naming rights. It
became Busch Stadium in 1954.
** A hummingbird’s favorite color is red.
** In August 1976, the Chicago White Sox baseball
team was issued Bermuda shorts and knee socks to
wear on hot summer days. The embarrassed players
only wore them once.
** A heavy duty coil spring from a John Deere
Cultivator was used to create the first breakaway rim
for basketball backboards. Devised by a retired Illinois
grain elevator manager, it was first used at the
National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Final Four.
** The Scottish Lake, Loch Ness, home of the fabled
Loch Ness monster, contains more fresh water than all
the lakes in England and Wales combined. It is about
23 miles long and 754 feet deep at its deepest point.
** In the first written rules of hockey written by a
student a McGill University in Montreal, Canada in the
1870s, the puck was square.
** The name of the internet’s very first search engine
was “Archie” a shortened form of archives
** Napoleon Bonaparte’s grandnephew, Charles,
founded the agency that became the FBI. While
serving as Attorney General in Theodore Roosevelt’s
cabinet in 1908, Charles created a unit of special
agents in the Justice Department that in 1909 was
named the Bureau of Investigation, and in 1935 the
word Federal was added to its name.
** The water and steam spewed by Old Faithful in
Yellowstone National Park has been measured at 204
degrees Fahrenheit (water) and more than 350
degrees (steam).
** The name of the bird with the multi-colored beak
pictured on Froot Loops cereal boxes is Toucan Sam.
** In bowling slang, a gutterball is also known as a
puddle or a poodle.
**Juvenile portobello mushrooms are known as brown
crimini.
** Citrus fruit can contain up to five seeds and still be
commercially classified as seedless.
** The only currency found in Abraham Lincoln’s wallet
after he was assassinated was a Confederate $5 bill.
** An average bushel of corn contains about 90,000
kernels.
** The citizens of Monaco are barred from gambling in
the country’s famous casino.
**Chuckles, the sugar-coated candies, are always
arranged in the same order: red, yellow, black, orange,
green.
** In the 1960s, the standard size dinner plate was 9
inches wide; today it is 12 inches.
Fleet Focus p. 2
LEE
TRAN
MOVES
INTO
NEW
STATE-OF-THE- ART F ACILITY
Lee County Transit recently moved in to their
new $42.9 million facility which includes 11,750
sq. ft. for Administration, 21,640 sq. ft. for
Operations and 45,156 sq. ft. for Maintenance.
Space for parking 125 full size buses, 90 ADA
para-transit vans and 325 employees and visitors
is also included.
In the new maintenance facility, there are 15
repair bays, a parts warehouse, a machine shop,
and electrical repair shop, as well as a 3-ton
crane for lifting bus components, and state-of-theart bus hydraulic lift systems. Tanks which hold
40,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 10,000 gallons
of unleaded gasoline are also on-site.
For the fitness enthusiasts, a 3-acre retention
pond is surrounded by a 1900 – foot fitness
walkway.
TEN BEST STATES IN THE U.S. TO RETIRE
1. Wyoming
2. Colorado
3. Utah
4. Idaho
5. Virginia
6. Iowa
7. Montana
8. South Dakota
9. Arizona
10. Nebraska
BUT OFFICER, IT WAS AN ACCIDENT…
Just a reminder …if you are in an accident with a
County vehicle, an incident report must be
completed. The original report along with the
repair estimates should be sent to Risk
Management with copies sent to Fleet
Management. Many times, Fleet receives the
repair request in the One World system but can’t
approve it because they don’t know anything
about the repair. Save your fiscal staff some
aggravation by sending all pertinent information
to Fleet prior to submitting the PO request. Also,
Fleet Management will notify department
directors when they find vehicle damage and no
incident report is on file.
DON’T SPILL THE BEANS
Have you ever wondered who to thank
when you’re getting your coffeemaker ready for
your first cup of the day? Coffee beans have been
made into beverages since the eleventh century,
but a German housewife named Melitta Bentz
updated brewing for the modern world. At the
turn of the 20th century, the usual method was to
tie up the coffee grounds in a small cloth bag and
place the bag into a pot of boiling water; the result
was a bitter, gritty drink. Bentz came up with a
new method. She put a piece of thick, absorbent
paper into a brass pot with a few holes punched in
it and poured the coffee through this two-part
contraption, which trapped the grounds and
allowed the filtered liquid to seep through and
drip into a waiting cup. She received a patent for
her coffee filter system in 1908 and founded a
business (do you use Melitta coffee filters?) that
still exists today.
Fleet Focus p. 3
THIS MONTH’S TRIVIA QUESTION
Q.
What veteran entertainer is credited by
Guinness World Records with logging the most
hours on U.S. television?
A. Johnny Carson
B. Oprah Winfrey
C. James Arness
D. Regis Philbin
Send your answer/guess to Marilyn Rawlings at
Fleet to be eligible to win a prize.
WHY DO FLORIDIANS PAY SO MUCH FOR FUEL?
Ever wonder why you pay more for fuel in
Florida than you do in other states? One of the
reasons is that Florida has the sixth highest fuel tax in
the country. Pennsylvania and New York are the
highest while Alaska and New Jersey are among the
lowest. Here’s the highest and the lowest five
according to Governing magazine:
LAST MONTH’S TRIVIA QUESTION
Q.
What legendary rock musician has an
international airport that bears his name?
A.
Ringo Starr
B.
Bono
C.
Julio Iglesias
D.
John Lennon
ANSWER: D. John Lennon. The Liverpool Airport
in Liverpool England, the city of John Lennon’s
birth, was officially renamed John Lennon Airport
in 2002. Skip Franklin from Parks and Recreation
was this month’s winner. Thanks to everyone who
played our trivia game.
QUOTABLE QUOTES:
How is it that our memory is good enough to retain
the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not
good enough to recollect how often we have told it to
the same person?
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613 – 1680)
French Writer
HIGHEST FUEL TAXES
Pennsylvania 50.5 cents
New York
45.1 cents
Connecticut
43.2 cents
California
45.4 cents
North Carolina 37.8 cents
21.3%
17.4%
17.7%
17.7%
17.2%
LOWEST FUEL TAXES
Alaska
11.3 cents
New Jersey
14.5 cents
South Carolina 16.8 cents
Oklahoma
17.0 cents
Arizona
19.0 cents
3.9%
7.0%
8.6%
9.4%
9.5%
FLORIDA
16.6%
36.4 cents
When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving
me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or
not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But
once a decision has been made, the debate ends.
From that point on, loyalty means executing the
decision as if it were your own.
Colin Luther Powell (1937 )
Secretary of State
Creditors have better memories than debtors.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
U.S. Diplomat, Inventor
Poor Richard’s Almanac (1758)
Flattery is alright–if you don’t inhale.
Adlai Stevenson (1900 – 1965)
Politician, Diplomat
Never cut what can be untied.
Joseph Joubert (1754 – 1824)
French Essayist
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (1925 )
American Author
If you ask people confidentially what they want most
in their jobs – if they’re paid anything decent at all –
they will say a greater sense of self worth.
Frederick Louis “Fritz” Maytag (1937 - )
Entrepreneur
I believe in the past many companies viewed individuals as being expendable. If you didn’t have the right
skill mix, you could always buy it. And I think now
we’re realizing that, one, you can’t always do that
because of demographics; there simply aren’t going to
be enough people with certain skills. Two, loyalty has
a value. Just putting people on the street and hiring
new ones is not a good way for the long haul. If you’re
asking people to accept change and deal with constant
change, then it has to be a longer term commitment.
William Wiggenhorn
President, Motorola University
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be
ruined by praise than saved by criticism.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898 – 1993)
U.S. Clergyman
Fleet Focus p. 4
FLEET FOCUS 5