By KEVIN NEVERS

The Chesterton Town Council has put municipal employees with take-home vehicles on notice: use those vehicles more responsibly or it will have to get heavy-handed.

As Member Sharon Darnell, D-4th, noted at the end of Monday’s meeting, residents have been approaching her recently and asking why they have seen marked municipal vehicles—Darnell did not specify which departments’—parked at all hours on the weekend at grocery and convenience stores.

Town policy sets a number of conditions on the use of take-home vehicles, among them these: employees may not drive them off-duty outside the limits of Porter, Lake, or LaPorte counties without explicit permission; while on duty they may drive them only within Chesterton’s corporate limits, unless they have official business outside those limits; all employees—except police officers and firefighters—must maintain a mileage sheet, noting the date, starting and ending mileage, total miles traveled, and whether the mileage was business or personal.

Clerk-Treasurer Gayle Polakowski made it clear that employees are expected to buy their own gasoline when they are driving their take-home vehicles off duty.

“I know we’re on the honor system,” Darnell observed, and take-home vehicles driven by police officers and firefighters are a different consideration, but with the price of gas right now employees absolutely must be more frugal.

“I see the vehicle as going to and from work,” said Member Emerson DeLaney, R-5th. “If you have to run out and get a gallon of milk, you have to ask whether you need that gallon. Or take your own vehicle. . . . I would like to see it cut down as much as possible.”

President Jim Ton, R-1st, concurred and asked department heads to ensure that take-home vehicles are being used “in the manner that was intended.”

“We want voluntary compliance,” Ton added. “We don’t want to have to make an ordinance. But this is a very vital situation, with the cost of gasoline. It will either come voluntarily or it will come from a compelling action from the council. We won’t be spending public money for gas on private journeys.”

Town Manager

Member Jeff Trout, R-2nd, took a moment at the end of the meeting once again to congratulate the Chesterton High School Honors Economics students for their presentations last week on the ways and means of hiring a town manager. “They had some good information and we’re certainly taking that under advisement,” he said.

Ton agreed. Some of the ideas were truly “innovative,” he said, and the council now needs to take some time to digest the recommendations. “We’re not at the beginning of the end but at the end of the beginning.”

Posted 5/13/2008