Anchorage Daily News

WASILLA -- At Palmer Police Department, employees are working in the dark and this fall will change work hours to save fuel.

In Wasilla, city employees are replacing police cruiser lights with brighter, more efficient LED or light-emitting diode lights and plan to do the same to city streetlights to conserve energy.

The trick, municipal officials say, is to find ways to save without cutting into the services provided.

In Palmer, Public Safety Director Jon Owen oversees both police and city fire departments. That includes 45 vehicles, although half are fire trucks that typically stay parked unless being used for training or in response to a fire call. Fifteen are police cars, he said.

Fresh from budget discussions on Friday, Owen said the city is looking at numerous ways to cut back energy consumption by 20 percent in 2009, starting with turning down thermostats and rethinking whether a public safety vehicle should remain running while at an accident or fire scene.

"We've tried to make this kind of a family effort, if you will," he said. "If you walk through the police station now, the lights are off in the halls; people are turning off the bathroom lights."

Owen said he and many of his employees use ambient light from the windows instead of turning office lights on. That will change when daylight wanes, he said, but it's having an effect. And bigger changes are in store.

Owen said police officers will change from five eight-hour shifts each week to seven 12-hour shifts followed by a week off in October. Officers drive patrol cars to and from work. He expects the new schedule will cut the city's monthly fuel budget by nine percent by reducing the number of days each officer is on shift, he said.

Owen said shift supervisors, typically sergeant-level officers, would ride with one of the two officers usually on patrol instead of driving a separate vehicle. And officers are getting out of their cars more frequently, he said.

"We've done an awful lot of walking and bicycle patrol," Owen said. "Much more so this summer. That has a lot of savings in fuel as well as more face time."

Ultimately, Owen said, the city is trying to make cuts that don't put the city at risk.

"The way we look at it is, every citizen is having to examine their driving habits and so are we," Owen said.

SAFETY OVER CONSERVATION

In Wasilla, police chief Angella Long said some savings just don't work for her officers.

"Our community is just not designed to have a designated downtown foot patrol in the traditional sense. There's a lot of vehicular patrol," she said.

Long said her officers are looking for ways to conserve, but not when it comes to patrolling the streets.

"The bottom line is, I don't want to diminish what the public feels they should have from the police department," she added.

Long's department has switched to lower-profile light bars with LED lights to make cars more aerodynamic and reduce the draw on batteries, she said. And recently, the city has purchased Chevrolet Tahoe sport-utility vehicles instead of similar Ford models because the Chevrolets get higher gas mileage. The new Tahoes, Long said, are set up as flex-fuel vehicles, so if local filling stations offer alternative fuel sources such as biofuels, the city can jump on board.

The Wasilla Police Department has 28 police cars its fleet. Typically, three officers are on the road at any given time in the 13-square-mile city. Long said officers put between 9,000 and 13,000 miles on their cars, mostly Ford Crown Victoria sedans, each year.

It's hard to gauge mileage, Long said. Environmental Protection Agency mileage estimates are out the window once things like light bars and other enforcement-related pieces are bolted on, she said.

FUEL BUDGETS RISE

Wasilla chief financial officer Cheryl Deariso said the city spent $186,503 on fuel from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, according to unaudited numbers. She budgeted $206,238 for fuel through fiscal 2009.

Wasilla public works director Archie Giddings oversees a fleet of between 20 and 30 vehicles. The department spends $3,000 to $4,000 a month on gasoline, he said, and more than that on diesel when winter road maintenance begins.

"It's the cost of doing business right now and so far, it's affordable. The budget's able to carry it," Giddings said.

The city, under a contract with Chevron for gasoline, pays 10 cents off at-the-pump prices, minus 33 cents in state and federal taxes. So when gas is $4.41, Wasilla pays $3.98. Wasilla purchasing officer Bill Miller said the city consumes about 45,000 gallons of gasoline each year.

The high gas prices could have come at a worse time, Giddings said. The cost of steel and other construction materials spiked in the last three to five years, he said, but those prices now appear to be leveling off, balancing out the high cost of fuel.

"We got good prices on water lines this year," he said. "It reflects that those real high years of construction cost increases have leveled off."

The leveling made it possible for Giddings' crew to extend city water service to two subdivisions this year, he said.

And, in a long-range effort to cut operating costs at city buildings, Giddings said his department is looking for ways to increase efficiency.

NEW LIGHT FIXTURES

New, more efficient fluorescent light fixtures are gradually replacing older fixtures throughout the city, he said, and he's planning to switch city streetlights to more-efficient LED lights, he said.

Right now, the city pays about $300 a year per streetlight, he said. LED lights should operate at a fraction of that cost.

Palmer city finance director Dean Baugh said every Palmer department is shooting for that 20-percent savings in 2009.

"We'll reduce consumption, but the cost might be just as high," Baugh said.

Palmer runs on a calendar year budget, so when fuel costs started rising at the beginning of this year, the city didn't have much of a cushion built in to its budget for fuel.

"I'm looking and a lot of our budgets are already coming up close to being busted," Baugh said.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.

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