News File Photo An Alpena County deputy drives his patrol car in this file photo from June. Alpena County leases the police cars and other vehicles in its fleet but pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so.

ALPENA — Alpena County pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for a fleet of leased vehicles for the sheriff’s office, maintenance department, and other county employees.

With the high cost of purchasing new vehicles outright, some commissioners say the county is saving money with the lease program.

The leases are four to five years long and the county is locked into the payments until the contracts expire.

The sheriff’s department alone pays $171,638 a year for their lease vehicles, which include patrol vehicles, Alpena County Treasurer Kim Ludlow said.

The county has a $1,122 a month payment for a vehicle for the school resource officer, and $3,864 a month for four vehicles for the maintenance department.

Ludlow said the lease payment per vehicle averages between $800 and $1,000 a month.

At least for the time being, the county is obligated to make the payments, and cuts to the fleet to save money and narrow the more than $1 million deficit isn’t in the cards.

As each lease expires, the county will decide what the best way forward is.

Commissioner Bill Peterson said the county was able to get more vehicles with the lease program than what they would have been able to purchase outright because of the high costs of new vehicles today. Also, he said, the lease puts the burden of expenses for things like oil changes and mechanical repairs on the leasing company and not the county.

Peterson said he believes the county will save about $40,000 this year on vehicle leases compared to loan payments and the added costs of repairs and maintenance. He said as leases begin to expire, the county could consider buying some of the current fleet cars outright and not renew the leases.

“With our older vehicles, we had them in the garage constantly for repairs and it was getting expensive,” Peterson said. “It is also hard to buy new vehicles because of the high price of them. We are trying to keep the miles low on them and see how much it will be to purchase them outright, but right now we don’t know what that cost will be.”

Commissioner Brenda Founier said not having to worry about expense repair costs is nice, but added that the vehicles do get a lot of miles put on them. She said until the county learns what the payoff or trade-in value of the vehicles is when the leases expire, it is hard to tell if the high payment costs are worth it.

“Yes, it costs a lot of money, but we’ll have to wait and see at the end of the lease if it is worth it to buy them or turn them in for new vehicles again,” she said. “There is a little bit of give and take with the program. Departments like the fairgrounds need them, especially the trucks with the plows because they have a lot of area to plow.”

Over the years, the county has leased vehicles and then began to purchase them, before moving to utilizing the lease option exclusively. The county still has a small fleet of vehicles it purchased over the years that staff often uses, but they too are getting high in mileage and succumbing to more frequent repairs.

Steve Schulwitz can be reached at 989-358-5689 or sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ss_alpenanews.com.