BY JEFF CHUDZINSKI
North Country This Week

MASSENA — The Village Board formally adopted a new vehicle use policy during a board meeting held on Aug. 16, which will still allow certain police officers to take vehicles home “in order to expedite response time.”

Mayor Greg Paquin, Deputy Mayor Matt LeBire and Trustee Chad Simpson all voted in favor of the resolution, with Trustee Francis Carvel voting against the new policy, citing a lack of inclusion.

Trustee Christine Winston was excused from the meeting.

Carvel, who had been critical of vehicle take home usage in previous months, opposed the new policy after village officials opted to sign a fleet management contract with Enterprise.

The decision to sign on with Enterprise, who will assist in procuring new vehicles for the police department, Department of Public works and similar departments in the village, was done as a way to “improve employee morale,” according to trustees.

“Now you’re going to leave one department with vehicles and strip all the other departments of vehicles. I wonder how that’s going to work for morale,” Carvel said.

Carvel was also critical of the policy for stripping all rights from other departments to allow vehicles to go home, including the K-9 officer, Department of Public Works superintendent, water foreman, street foreman and joint recreation director.

Under the new policy the Chief of Police, Lieutenant and

Carvel said the choice for him was an all or nothing choice.

For years and years, the DPW was the red-headed stepchild. It was always, if you need an extra $10,000, you just took it out of the DPW. That’s the easiest one that you could do. I think they’ve suffered the brunt of it for enough years. So, if you’re not going to take them all, don’t take any. That’s my opinion because you’re not accomplishing anything by going halfway,” Carvel said.

Under the new policy, village vehicles can not be taken home or driven for personal use, as a general rule.

No vehicles are allowed to leave the town or village unless for official business and no village vehicles may leave the town or village while on a meal or rest break, according to officials.

Accurate mileage when fueling vehicles is also going to be strictly enforced after Deputy Mayor Matt LeBire was critical of departmental record keeping when assessing previous records.

The move to ensure accurate record keeping is also a high priority with Enterprise now managing the fleet of village vehicles. Officials previously said such records allow Enterprise to make the appropriate decisions to sell vehicles based on correct valuations, which can become skewed if accurate mileage records are not kept.

Under the police, Mayor Greg Paquin must also give permission for anyone more than 10 miles outside of town to be able to take a village vehicle home.

Paquin also told the board that DPW Superintendent Marty Miller would have full discretion to send employees home with vehicles in the event of a large snowstorm or ice storm “knowing that they’re probably going to have to come right in at some point.”

Considerations are being made to revisit the policy in the next six months as well, as some were not entirely sold on the policy as it was written initially.

“We talked about revisiting the policy, seeing how good the policy is actually working and making tweaks to it,” Simpson told the board.

Mayor Paquin confirmed during the meeting that the board is expected to revisit the policy in the next six months.