Committee hears questions about HACTO vehicle replacements and waiver counts

Budget analyst staff and the mayor's budget office spent significant time June 24 reviewing the city's vehicle‑replacement policy under the HACTO ordinance and the budgeted vehicle requests.

Severn Campbell (Budget Analyst Office) said the mayor's proposed budget contained about $3 million in vehicle requests and the analyst recommended approximately $500,000 in reductions embedded across department budgets. She said the ordinance's implementation currently counts a subset of the fleet — roughly 628 vehicles of an approximately 1,900 baseline — toward the reduction target, which means the 20% requirement applies to the counted subset (about 120–130 vehicles), not the full fleet.

Kate Howard (Mayor's Budget Director) said waivers and adjustments reduce the counted base to about 650 vehicles and that the budget expects to reduce roughly 99 vehicles this year, exceeding the adjusted requirement by about 45 vehicles. Supervisors raised several concerns about replacing vehicles with low mileage (about half of the replacements inspected had less than 50,000 miles) and suggested amending HACTO to consider mileage, fuel economy and maintenance costs rather than relying solely on vehicle age.

Supervisor John Avalos said he wanted a more detailed, citywide look at vehicles rather than piecemeal department decisions. Analyst staff said a comprehensive report to the Board President would be released shortly and would provide the global analysis supervisors requested.

There was no formal vote to change HACTO at the hearing; supervisors requested further analysis and discussion of potential ordinance adjustments.