Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon said he expects to see the impact of higher gas prices peppered throughout budget hearings this fall. Higher prices at the pump will likely translate into higher costs for construction materials, imported merchandise and even natural gas to heat buildings, he said.

Programs that rely on vehicles like Meals on Wheels, he said, cater 900 meals a day to county residents and will have to pare down their programs or dip deeper into budgets.

"As prices go up and your budgets stay the same, that means we have to cut back," Corroon said.

But Miller said the county's sheriff's office, which uses its fleet vehicles for routine patrol duties as well as taking prisoners to and from jail, is the hardest hit by the rising prices.

The new budget for fiscal year 2005-06 recommended the county plan on spending $2 per gallon for its sheriff's vehicles, a 10-cent increase from last year and amounting to a total of $85,000 a month on fuel.

Although the county has been on budget so far, fiscal manager Jared Davis said it has really been the past six weeks that gas prices have skyrocketed.

He expects new reports to show the gas budget in the red, requiring an infusion of more money during midyear budget adjustments in June.

That trend is mirrored on

the county's west side, where West Valley police spent more than $30,000 for gas in June alone, up from about $21,000 per month in 2004. They ended the fiscal year this summer nearly $33,000 in the red.

For the current fiscal year, West Valley City increased its gas budget for police to $312,000, or $26,000 per month. As of Tuesday, however, nearly $28,000 had already been spent on fuel with eight days remaining in the month.

The city is preparing to replace 14 older police cars as part of the normal vehicle rotation. In the past, the City Council has talked about switching some of West Valley City's fleet to hybrid gas-electric vehicles to help with costs, but city finance director Jim Welch said there has been no substantive decision made and using hybrids is just one of the ideas that's been discussed.

"Boy, if they could make a Crown Vic that was a hybrid for the police, that would be really cool," Welch said.

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Contributing: Pat Reavy, Doug Smeath, Brady Snyder, Tad Walch

E-mail: lisa@desnews.com; estewart@desnews.com