The Clark County Department of Aviation will spend $7.5 million over the next three years to replace and modernize its equipment and fleet of vans, pickups and SUVs.
In total, the department will purchase about 250 new vehicles. Around the same number of vehicles from the airport’s current fleet of 350 vehicles will be retired and auctioned over the same time.
The County Commission approved the purchases last month and new vehicles are already being acquired from multiple automotive dealerships inside Clark County, including Findlay Chevrolet and Ford Country.
They’ll be used at McCarran International Airport and the other four general aviation facilities in the county’s airport system.
“It’s essential for airports to have vehicles available for the regular day-to-day business that happens,” said Rosemary Vassiliadis, Clark County’s Director of Aviation. “Private vehicles cannot be on the airfield anywhere on the secured side.”
In 2010, the airport had 433 vehicles in its fleet.
But due to cost saving measures implemented when passenger traffic and revenue plunged during the Great Recession, more vehicles were retired than purchased for several years. Today the airport owns more than 150 vehicles that are 10 years old or older.
“A lot of our vehicles have over 100,000 miles,” Vassiliadis said. “We’ve extended it as a far as we could, but there’s just no (return on investment) for repairing them.”
The $7.5 million budgeted for the next three years won’t make a huge dent in the airport’s budget. Its annual operating expenditures have been between $230 million and $240 million the past three fiscal years.
