Steve Nelson, CGCS said: Never used the company but I guess I wouldn't be suspicious as these types of plans are generally good things as others have mentioned. Working for a city for the last 25 years, this has been SOP, and it has worked well. Everything still gets re-evalutated before putting a replacement piece into a future budget, but that's good too because deferred maintenance is one thing, replacing things that don't need to be replaced is another. Mel I'm surprised your city hasn't been doing this.
I'm not to a degree, although the city might have been doing it, but just at a higher level. I do know since our new city manager has been on board (5-6 years), there has been a renewed emphasis on this, especially in fleet vehicles.
Parks is starting to get better with this as well. Part of the problem was some mismanagement with pension payments by the city back before the bubble burst, in the fire and police pension plan that the city runs. It was funded at 100% back in the boom years, so city didn't pay into it and went to fund big projects? (all before I got here). They then have since been playing catch-up to the fund. All other pensions and new police and fire go into the state fund which is funded at 85-90%+. I will say they have been very successful when it came to road improvements, where projects are planned out way in advance, and when the sales tax comes up for renewal, they will present the most updated list of projects along with what was "Completed as Promised" and the tax gets renewed no problem.
Parks had other priorities as well, growing new parks with a sales tax, that was recently defeated, and during the recession the other sales tax that was suppose to pay for upkeep of new parks wasn't enough. Some say we probably grew a little to fast. The department was also trying to wean itself off the subsidy from the city to become self sufficient. Just in the last couple of years have they been able to start improving their fleet.
Golf is a little different because we're an enterprise fund, so if we have a bad year, something breaks down that is not expected, and other items keeps us from replacing equipment like we should. I do have a 5 year equipment replacement plan we try to follow, until something else breaks down, so except for 3 years ago, we haven't been able to follow it. We brought in a new tractor and greens mower 3 years ago, nothing last year, and a Workman this year to replace a Cushman that the rear end fell apart on. Still waiting to replace that bank mower we have been without for 5 years now.
Mel