Clark County maintains service despite budget cut

LAS VEGAS — Clark County School District had to cut more than $5 million from its transportation budget, but the operation has employed a few strategies to maintain the same level of service.

Frank Giordano, director of transportation, said that consolidating routes and a midday park-out program have been effective techniques in compensating for some of the lost budget dollars.

“We leave the majority of our buses at select schools to eliminate ‘dead head’ miles during our midday break,” Giordano said. “This program alone has the potential of saving us almost half a million dollars.”

With a total of more than 1,500 school buses, Clark County has one of the biggest school district fleets in the nation.

Giordano was recently promoted to the director position of the transportation department, where he has worked for more than 27 years. He shared several other noteworthy developments from his operation:

• For the second year in a row, Clark County School District won the state school bus driver roadeo.

• The operation recently received its ISO 9001:2000 recertification.

• Over the past year, the district outfitted almost 1,000 of its diesel buses with exhaust aftertreatment equipment.

• The district has on order one of Thomas Built Buses’ new Saf-T-Liner C2e hybrid school buses. “We’re hoping to have it in late October,” Giordano said.

• All of the operation’s buses currently run on B5 biodiesel. “We were running B20, but due to the budget crisis, we are at the B5 blend now,” Giordano said.