Public Works presents $79.7M budget; fleet rate overhaul shifts costs to users and raises concerns among partners

Public Works Director Gary Stockall and fleet staff told the Budget Committee the department’s total proposed budget for 2025–27 is $79,700,000. The department’s presentation covered road maintenance, engineering, transit, facilities and fleet, and included a major discussion of recent fleet-rate changes intended to eliminate a long-standing internal deficit.

The county said it moved fuel costs out of the flat operation-and-maintenance (O&M) rate and separated fuel as a pass-through so departments budget fuel directly; the county also raised the external shop rate used for work billed to outside entities from roughly $153 per hour to about $192 per hour. “We went from like 153 an hour to 192 an hour,” Public Works Director Gary Stockall said when describing the external rate change.

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