That money could — and should — be spent on other items such as computers for classrooms, he said.
“It is a waste of taxpayers’ money,” he said.
Tagliente told his fellow board members at their Sept. 18 meeting that he wants Boone County Schools to do what it did when he was its transportation director: Take the maintenance vehicles to the bus garage, where supervisor Luther Eversole and his employees could service and repair them for free. It would cost the county only the price of parts.
“This only happened after Steve Pauley became superintendent and Andy Dolan became maintenance director,” Eversole said. “We always serviced them here before that.”
Pauley doesn’t think Boone County Schools is wasting money, however.
“We operate an annual budget of $42 million here, so we aren’t talking about a significant amount of money,” Pauley said. “We are paying for service. We get it done immediately. We still have to buy the parts either way. This way, we don’t have to wait for service.”
Furthermore, the superintendent said, Dolan should decide where to send his vehicles for repair.
“It should be his call,” Pauley said. “It is his responsibility to make sure the maintenance department employees can get to their jobs and get their jobs done. We need those vehicles up and running. He feels like he can achieve that quicker if he doesn’t have to wait on the bus garage.
Tagliente asked his counterparts to place the issue on the agenda for their Oct. 1 meeting, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the conference room of the operations complex in Foster.
It passed by a 4-1 margin, with Tagliente, President Gary Woodrum, Mark Sumpter and Bob Brown voting yes and Vice President Danny Cantley voting no.
“They need to bring their vehicles to us,” Eversole said. “It’s the right thing to do for the taxpayers.
“If they do bring the vehicles back over here, it will be a big headache for me, but only because I won’t have the support of the superintendent,” he added. “There will be animosity.
“They don’t want to bring them back over here. They will do everything they can to make it look like we can’t take care of those vehicles. But we did a fine job all of those years we took care of them before that.”
Tagliente pointed out that Boone County Schools has spent $105,629 on service and repairs for its maintenance vehicles since 2003, including $6,919 since July 1.
Tagliente also noted that an overwhelming majority of that money — about $100,000 — went to Doug’s Auto, which is owned by Doug Hill.
Hill was the city of Madison’s mechanic when Dolan was its mayor.
“He can work on anything,” Dolan said of Hill, “and he has a big enough building and lift to work on our big trucks.”
It is unclear why or how the maintenance vehicles stopped going to the bus garage for service and repairs.
Dolan and Eversole offer conflicting reports. Dolan said the bus garage’s mechanics stopped working on the maintenance department’s vehicles. Eversole said Dolan stopped bringing them to him. Both claim they were given neither a reason nor a warning.
Pauley questions whether Eversole’s staff can handle Dolan’s requests for service and repairs.
“I can’t imagine how they can efficiently work 20 maintenance vehicles into their schedule and still take care of their bus issues as well,” Pauley said.
Eversole said he and his crew did it before and they can do it again.
“We can do it,” Eversole said. “We did it for years.”
Dolan said he is concerned about the vehicles themselves, more so than where they are serviced and repaired. In his opinion, they need to be replaced.
Dolan pointed out that eight of his 24 vehicles have more than 200,000 miles, including three with more than 400,000 miles.
“They are working on junk,” he said. “If they would buy new vehicles, they wouldn’t be spending huge sums of money on big-money items such as transmissions. They would be doing routine maintenance and it wouldn’t cost them that much.”
Pauley agreed.
“It is time for us to buy some new vehicles,” he said.
Contact Managing Editor Jacob Messer at HYPERLINK "jacobmesser@coalvalleynews.com" jacobmesser@coalvalleynews.com or 369-1165.
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