Cloudy with snow showers mainly during the evening. Low 14F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 40%..

Cloudy with snow showers mainly during the evening. Low 14F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 40%.

Brown & Sons Fuel in Lisbon provides fueling services in the local area. Kendallville receives a small discount from the provider and typically refuels its larger fire enginers at the pumps off C.R. 350N.

Brown & Sons Fuel in Lisbon provides fueling services in the local area. Kendallville receives a small discount from the provider and typically refuels its larger fire enginers at the pumps off C.R. 350N.

Fueling up police cars, fire engines, dump trucks, schools buses and all other types of vehicles being used by local governments is getting more expensive, too, as gasoline prices have jumped upward of $4 per gallon.

Local governments do have the ability to take annual bids and lock in prices for fuel for a long-term — a potential cost savings when prices spike — but local agencies hadn't done that before the latest surge in fuel impacted by the war in Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia and its oil exports.

That's going to put a bite into fuel budgets funded by local tax dollars.

The Noble County Highway Department takes annual bids for fuel since it uses a lot of it every year driving around the county's 800 miles of roadways doing repairs and maintenance and does it two ways.

"We receive fuel bids (both gas and diesel) at a contract price and a cash price. Bidding this way gives a base bid to compare fuel vendors. The cash price is the cost for receiving fuel on that given day, where as the contract price is a price that is guaranteed for the entire year. Using this in tandem with an escalation clause gives us the ability to purchase fuel futures, in which we can get fuel at a set price, but are required to receive the fuel within the contracted time period or pay a penalty," Highway Department Engineer Zack Smith said.

Unfortunately, the county hasn't bought in bulk recently, meaning it's paying increased price at the pump.

"There has not been a dip or 'sweet spot' in the market in over a year and we are currently buying fuel at the cash price for any given day and are in the same situation as the general public," Smith said.

Smith had purchased 8,000 gallons of gas at $1.34 per gallon in April 2020 — when prices bottomed out at the peak of the stay-at-home times of the early pandemic and national demand plummeted — and 15000 gallons of diesel at $1.50 per gallon in March 2021.

The county bought in bulk against in early 2021, purchasing 32,000 gallons at a range of $1.70-$1.91 per gallon and 52,500 gallons of diesel at $1.90 per gallon.

But the county used up the last of its diesel in November and finished up its gasoline supply in January, Smith said.

After changing energy priorities and instability in Eurasia causing rising fuel prices, the county isn't likely to purchase in bulk again in the immediate future.

"With all the uncertainty and the escalating fuel prices, we will likely not look at contracting fuel any time in the near future," Smith said.

Unstable fuel prices are one reason why Kendallville is also paying at the pump, as the city hasn't done annual bids in some time, city engineer Scott Derby said.

"It’s been a few years since the City has bid out fuel prices. We had to get away from that during a time of rather volatile fuel prices when the local stations were unwilling to lock in prices for any length of time," Derby said.

Kendallville does save a little bit as compared to the average citizen in that it doesn't have to pay federal gas tax, and also gets a small discount when fueling at Brown & Sons in Lisbon, although typically only the city fire trucks refuel there because they're too large for other refueling locations, Derby said.

East Noble Schools and its fleet of buses is another local agency dealing with the increased fuel prices, although the district gets a discount for buying in bulk.

"We get below market rates based on discounts for prompt payment and volume purchased. Effectively, the more gallons of fuel we purchase during a buying period, I believe every two weeks, the higher the volume discount we receive per gallon. For instance, we save more per gallon during the school year when we have all of our buses on the road than we do in the summer when we only have a few buses out on extracurricular trips and charter trips," East Noble Transportation Director Josh Buhro said.

Unlike some agencies that can cut back on driving to save some fuel — during very high gas prices in 2008, for example, some police agencies trimmed back on patrol miles to save fuel and money — bus routes have to be run on a day-to-day basis.

However, that doesn't mean there's not some wiggle room to find some savings when needed, Buhro said. Routes can be re-evaluated to see if there are ways to shorten the drives and East Noble allows bus drivers to take their buses home instead of bringing them back to the transportation garage if it's shorter mileage to do so.

"We currently have over half of our fleet who utilize this take-home bus strategy, providing us with considerable savings," Buhro said. "There are some cases where the garage is closer to the first or last stop of a route making parking here more efficient than allowing a driver to take it home, so in those cases we require the bus to be parked here at the garage."

Aside from just gasoline, higher oil prices are also likely to have an impact on the construction market, especially for road work, which uses many petroleum-based products for paving and maintenance.

The good news is that the road work season is still a little ways off waiting for warmer weather, so it's possible the situation could change and prices could drop.

If they don't, or worse, increase more, the higher unit costs are likely to impact how much work can get done this year, Smith said.

"A lot of people are kind of waiting to see how it plays out," Smith said. "Obviously we make our plan in May, so hopefully we'll have better pricing information when we get there."

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