Committee presses for centralized fleet maintenance data and Fleetio use to guide vehicle replacements

The Infrastructure Committee on July 21 devoted a substantial portion of its meeting to fleet maintenance and the need to centralize maintenance records to support data‑driven replacement decisions.

Councilors and department staff described inconsistent entry of maintenance invoices into the city's Fleetio asset management system and said the result is incomplete data for replacement‑decision criteria. A councilor said his office recorded $47,000 in vehicle maintenance for 10 vehicles last year but believed much of that work had not been logged into Fleetio. Staff and councilors discussed several remedies: routing all maintenance invoices to a central repository, training departmental staff on Fleetio entry, and potentially designating an FTE to process archived invoices into the Fleetio system.

Speakers argued that complete Fleetio data could enable rules such as replacement triggers when repair costs exceed a set percentage of book value or when mileage/age thresholds are met. Staff said some departments already enter repairs into Fleetio (for example, in‑house shop work is tracked by parts managers), but external vendor invoices sometimes bypass the Fleetio entry process.

The committee urged a short implementation plan: centralize invoices, ensure each maintenance invoice is replicated into a shared folder, provide Fleetio training for staff, and return with a vehicle replacement policy based on Fleetio reports. Councilors said they would support efforts to establish replacement criteria and to budget capital accordingly rather than relying on ad‑hoc replacements or leasing without data.