Agenda Packets - 1985/02/04 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MEMO TO: MAYOR AND CITY COUN�'ll FROM: CLERK-ADMINTSTRAT �" DATE: JANUARY 29, 1985 SUBJECT: IRS REGHLATiONS REGARDING TAKE HOME VEHICLES The Internal Revenue Service has recently promulgated temporary regulations on how to calculate income tax liability on certain fringe benefits such as the personal use of municipal vehicles including police cruisers and other types of autos. Staff is presenting this issue to you for two reasons. The first is that at the current time Police Chief Ramacher takes home the unmarked investigators car for two reasons. The first being we currently do not have enough garage space for safe storage of our police vehicles and secondly, Chief Ramacher finds himself on an extremely frequent basis having to respond to incidents which, if he did not have a vehicle at his immediate disposal, would require that he come to the City offices and obtain a car prior to appearing at the scene which would delay his response to incidents significantly. The second reason for presenting this issue to you is the simple fact that Staff, particularly the Police Officers in the City of Mounds View, feel that these new regulations will have a significant negative impact upon the ability of various law enforcement agencies within the State of Minnesota and the Nation as a whole on their ability to provide adequate law enforcement services to the public. The reason we are saying this is that the new regulations would provide that wherever a Police Officer is entitled to take home a car, but are not permitted to use it for personal reasons, and if the situation occurs at least 15 days each year then a benefit of $4.00 per day to the employee is imputed by the IRS. Various members of the City Staff are currently aware of the fact that there are several smaller law enforcement agencies in smaller outstate cities having minimal storage facilities or such a small staff that each officer is on duty on an around -the -clock basis. This regulation would impair these cities' ability to provide adequate law enforcement. Also, as some of you may know the State Patrol allows their officers to take their patrol vehicles home rather than having them commute back and forth to central garage facilities which would inhibit their being able to provide a full eight hour shift and cost the State significantly in having to provide additional facilities. As you may note from the attachments to this memorandum, several organizations including the National League of Cities, Government Finance Officers Association, and International City Management Association are examining these new regulations with the intent of taking an official position with regard to these regulations.