LAPLACE — St. John employees using parish vehicles are going to be under a new fuel monitoring system next month to track how much gasoline and diesel is being used.

St. John the Baptist Parish administrators are hopeful the new system will save taxpayer dollars.

St. John Chief Administrative Officer Michael Coburn said the parish has been operating without a fuel monitoring system.

“Like (Parish President Natalie) Robottom said, we were concerned with some of the issues like the amount of gasoline we were buying week to week and month to month not quite adding up,” Coburn said.

To address administrator concerns, St. John Parish Council members voted 7-1 Tuesday to contract with Trak Engineering Inc. to install a monitoring system.

District 2 Councilman Ranney Wilson voted against the measure, while District 1 Councilman Art Smith was not in attendance.

Wilson said he was concerned about employee accountability and how accurate Trak’s program could be in the face of fraud.

“The problem I had is if I had a card, got my vehicle, pulled up and put 10 gallons in my vehicle, then I have my friend sitting next to me and he comes in with a five-gallon can and takes five gallons from the pump,” Wilson said. “Then I come back two or three days later and put another 15 gallons in my vehicle. I don’t want this not to be watched.”

Coburn said there would be multiple people monitoring the tracking system.

“The person in the warehouse will be monitoring it, as well as Laverne Saulny, who is over procurement, monitoring it,” he said. “Then it will come to me, and I will be monitoring it. There will be at least three sets of eyes watching it, and I’m sure the Parish President will be watching it too. So, four sets of eyes will be put on it.”

Trak Engineering sales manager Scherri Horaist said the system is designed to improve fuel efficiency and usage tracking.

“There will be trackers installed on each of the pumps at each of the East Bank and West Bank locations,” Horaist said. “The driver will pull up to the fuel island and have a card with a memory chip in it. They will be authorized or not authorized to obtain fuel. When they put the card in, the pump will say this driver is authorized to receive fuel up to X amount of gallons. Or, the pump will say you are not authorized to receive fuel, and then it will deny that person access to the pump.”

Horaist said St. John has been using fuel sheets that employees fill in when they receive fuel, but on occasion, sheets have been misplaced, not filled out properly or ignored.

“It became apparent that the parish was spending more on fuel each year than usual, then years prior with no significant increase in the number of vehicles,” she said. “It became obvious there was a problem with the tracking of the fuel. We have this system in some parishes in Louisiana and in many municipalities across the United States.”

Coburn said whenever a program like this is put in place, there would be a savings, because someone’s watching.

“We are waiting until like the first month and we get a report from the management team saying ‘hey we spent this number last month and this is what we spent this month,’” Coburn said. “We will have better numbers once it’s put into operation.”

The program should be operational by mid-December.

This new tracking system will cost the parish $69,077.12 for 10 years.

“There is an initial outlay of $24,566.75 worth of equipment,” Horaist said. “That will include the pulsars that will track on the existing dispensers and pumps. When you amortize that over a period of years, there are some additional expenditures to extend the system, maintain it and add additional systems. The bid was for a 10-year period, so when you add all those expenditures on top of the initial outlay, it was probably going to run about $70,000. Since we have been awarded the contract, we will work towards putting the system in place.”

— By Raquel Derganz Baker