REVEALED…Explanation for high fuel costs!!! How did you fair with gas prices over the summer?
Robertson did just fine, filling up with YOUR money!
Fuel ups that don’t make sense, unexplained out of town trips, District vehicles being used as personal vehicles, and even evidence of odometer rollbacks…
Fuel Consumption
Fuel & oil are pretty standard expenses for a fire department or fire protection district. To respond to a call, emergency vehicles need fuel and a lot of it. Total fuel and oil expenses were collected from the financial statements or audits of six fire protection districts and one fire department in the North County area of St. Louis County for the years of 2017 to 2020 (4 years total, except for Pattonville FPD with 3 years). The master incident number from Central County Emergency 911 (CCE911) call data was used to determine total calls.
NOTE: An additional factor considered was chiefs, assistant chiefs, battalion chiefs and medical officers receiving government issued utility vehicles that were used as personal vehicles contributing to fuel cost. This practice is universal as well as the number of these positions to a district or department, so this type of fuel consumption is controlled for within.
Fuel Cost per Incident
Average Fuel Cost per Incident was determined by dividing the total cost for fuel and oil by the total number of master incident numbers in a year.
Highest Fuel Cost per Incident: Among the seven districts and departments analyzed in average fuel cost per incident, Robertson Fire Protection District was the highest. It cost on average $6.45 in fuel for the six other districts and departments to respond to an incident between the years 2017 to 2020, however, it cost Robertson FPD $14.90 during that same period…more than double.
It is important to note some fire departments and fire protection districts differ in the number of responding vehicles to an incident. Some will send only an ambulance to certain incidents while others have policies requiring both an ambulance and a fire engine to all incidents.
Furthermore, some FPDs such as Spanish Lake and Black Jack FPD only provide fire service and use Christian Hospital for their ambulance service.
To account for this, we used the radio numbers assigned to each master incident number to determine the total responding vehicles for a given year.
Fuel Cost per Responding Vehicle
Given Robertson FPD sends both an ambulance and a fire engine to most incidents, we wanted to make sure that this doubling up on emergency vehicles did not skew our data. This also accounts for FPDs with no ambulance service.
Looking at total number of responding vehicles means we are looking at all vehicles sent to any emergency call in a year.
Highest Fuel Cost per Responding Vehicle: Robertson FPD has the highest fuel cost per responding vehicle among the six other FPD and Depts analyzed. Not including Robertson FPD, it costs on average of $4.53 for one vehicle to respond to one call. By contrast, Robertson FPD costs $8.30 per responding vehicle.
To fully understand this spending, on December 12th, 2021, Citizens to Save Hazelwood & Fire Services submitted an open records requests for a copy of any and all statements for WEX Bank (fuel card service) for the years of 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Robertson Fire Protection District has yet to fulfil this request.
To make sure this high fuel cost wasn’t a result of lower call numbers, we ran a correlation coefficient to see if there was a linear relationship between the fuel cost and (1) the number of calls received and (2) number of responding vehicles. There is no statistical relationship between fuel cost and the number of incidents(calls) nor fuel cost (r=-0.339) nor the fuel cost and the number of responding vehicles (r=-0.306).
However, there is a positive statistical correlation between average total amount spent on fuel and total number of calls the district receives per year (r=0.777), which makes sense, the more calls the more fuel consumed.
AN INTERESTING NOTE: If you remove Robertson FPD from the correlation analysis, the correlation between fuel expenses and number of calls gets even STRONGER (r=0.833). This demonstrates that Robertson FPDs fuel consumption is out of line enough to skew the statistics.
Limitations: The amount of data CCE911 provided to our group only included the above districts and Hazelwood fire department. On December 6th, 2021, Citizens to Save Hazelwood & Fire Services filed an open records request to Central County 911 for additional data to expand our analysis.
Explanation of Fuel Cost
To fully understand what was driving Robertson FPD’s fuel cost, WEX Bank (fuel card service) statements were reviewed in combination with emergency call data provided by Central County Emergency 911 for the years of 2017 through 2021.
A review of these statements revealed three main reasons for the suspicious fuel costs:
Fuel Mismatches & Multiple Fuel Ups
Unexplained out of town trips.
Administrative use of fuel cards for any and all transportation outside the purposes of public safety.
Note: These suspicious transactions and fueling behaviors are what could be identified. At times pages were missing from statements and some transactions needed more information to define as suspicious. Robertson FPD originally only provided summary statements with amount totals until they were called out publicly and a second request was made through our sunshine lawsuit.
Fuel Mismatches & Multiple Fuel Ups
This transaction occurs when the fuel type purchased does not match the actual vehicle being fueled (See Table 2). Robertson FPD’s ambulances, fire trucks and the pick-up truck take diesel fuel, while the Tahoes and Suburban take unleaded.
Maybe these are legitimate transactions, but according to Robertson FPD, a fuel card assigned to the vehicle is kept inside the cab at all times. This fact, coupled with the District’s high fuel expenses and the frequency of mismatches makes this fueling behavior questionable.
Fuel mismatches at times occur with multiple fuel ups where the fuel card is used to fill multiple vehicles at once. This happens often and many times the mileage is not entered when it does. When it does, this obscures the details of the transaction, and it is difficult to determine if it is a legitimate vehicle fill-up. However, the few mismatch instances where the mileage is entered shows the miles and gallons do not add up to a legitimate transaction.
Unexplained Out of Town Trips
While sometimes it is necessary for administrative staff to travel out of town for official district business, several of these trips lack explanation in the meeting minutes as well as training/conference receipts (See Table 3).
There are at least eight identified out of town trips that lack explanation, some with mismatch fuel ups and would require the individual fueling to be in two states at once.
Sunshine requests to the District requested all receipts for training and conferences for 2019 through 2021 to find an explanation for these trips, none were found. There could be an explanation for 2017 or 2018, but again there is no reason given in the meeting minutes.
One of the most extreme examples includes the use of the District pickup truck in an over 800 mile trip with a stop off in Effingham, Illinois.
Effingham, Illinois
On April 11th, 2019, the Robertson FPD Dodge Ram pickup truck was filled up in Bridgeton, Missouri at 7:02am. According to the WEX Bank statement this same fuel card is used to fill up again 37hrs later at 8:29pm in Effingham, Illinois located 108.5 miles from Robertson Firehouse 1. Yet the mileage driven in this 37hr period was 788 miles.
There is no explanation for this trip in the meeting minutes or training/conference receipts. This trip may have an explanation, but as of right now it does not seem to make sense.
Administrative Fuel Expenditures
Providing vehicles to administrative staff is customary for fire departments and districts. Robertson FPD currently supplies the Chief, Assistant Chief, Fire Marshal and Medical Officer with Chevy Tahoes. How the department or district provides fuel for these vehicles is another issue.
Analysis of the WEX Bank statements suggests that between 2019 and 2021 most of the administration were using their Tahoes and fuel cards for any and all transportation. Based on the amount of miles logged on each vehicle and the amount of fuel purchased, the administrative staff use the fuel cards for travel to and from work as well as travel outside the purposes of public safety.
A comparison of total fuel expenditures in 2019 & 2020 found that 33.46% of the overall fuel cost were the result of Administrative SUVs despite the fact that they responded to only 0.08% of emergency calls according to emergency dispatch call records.
Looking at the total mileage the Administrative staff drives in a given year or even per day suggests the district vehicles are being used as personal vehicles. According to the Federal Highway Administration with the U.S. Department of Transportation, the average American in 2020 drove an 13,476 miles per year or about 36.9 per day (https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm).
By contrast the three main Robertson FPD’s administrative staff are driving an average of 24,446 per year, or 66.9 miles per day in district-issued vehicles (See Table 4). This is 9,671 miles per year or 30 miles per day more than the average motorist in a 365 day calendar year. All on vehicles these employees do not own in a district that is only 16 square miles. Most of this is related to where some these administrative staff members live (Lonedell, Foristell & Wright City).
We are not going to argue here the administrative staff should not have their vehicles at all times. If a major emergency occurs, they need to be prepared to respond, as they are always on call.
What will be argued is the wisdom on the part of the Board of Directors to hire leadership who live, in some cases, over an hour away. Most departments and districts actually have a 10-12 mile radius in place for the following reasons:
If a major emergency occurs the command staff would struggle to get to the scene within a reasonable time.
The wear and tear put on taxpayer-paid-for district vehicles is inappropriate.
The cost of fuel expenditures to provide gasoline for these three to get to work is questionable. Why are the taxpayers taking such a financial hit on behalf of the administrative staff.
Also based on the fact that administrative SUVs are only responding to 0.08% of calls, it is clear the Board of Directors has no on-call policy in place for leadership which would limit the number of staff using their vehicles while off-duty.
Few Noteworthy details:
1. The new/current Assistant Chief’s travel and fuel usage appear to be appropriate for his position and work schedule. Furthermore, he is the only administrative staff member from 2012 to current where no evidence of possible improprieties have been found.
2. Fuel and transportation data for one member of the staff could not be properly analyzed. According to Carfax and WEX Bank statements there appear to be consistent odometer rollbacks on his district-issued vehicles.
Repetitive Odometer Rollbacks
Throughout our review of the Robertson FPD use of fuel cards and district vehicles, two vehicle mileage seemed to defy space and time. The CarFax Reports, WEX fuel card statements and even vehicle title documents for two district-issued vehicles show evidence of mileage rollbacks on the odometer.
Possible Fraud to the Department of Revenue
This pattern was originally discovered while trying to understand Robertson FPD’s Internal Bidding Process where district vehicles were being sold to the administrative staff for a large discount.
In June 2016, the Robertson FPD Board of Directors approved the sale of his district owned 2010 Ford Expedition, worth at the time according to CarGuru.com approximately $19,900, for only $4,000. According to the CarFax report on June 2nd, 2016 the mileage of this vehicle read 106,698 miles. However, 48 days later on July 19th, when Director Joan Noel signed the vehicle title over to this employee, the mileage reported on the title was 66,907.
How Director Noel did not notice she was selling a taxpayer-paid-for vehicle with so few miles for such little money is questionable at the least. Additionally, if the Board of Directors had been annually reviewing fuel statements, they would have found this to be a consistent problem.
Continuous Documented Mileage Inconsistencies
A further look into this issue found (See Table 5):
Multiple instances of long trips, including one that was ~500 miles per day,
Odometer rollbacks reported in CarFax,
Inconsistent WEX Bank entries within and between statements as well as reported mileage in the vehicles’ CarFax reports.
It was impossible to fit all examples of this as there were so many, only some of the more ridiculous were chosen. While we do not know exactly who is rolling back the odometer, this issue raise more questions about how the Robertson Fire Protection District is managed.
