HAVERHILL — The crackdown on city employees taking city vehicles home from work continues.

Four maintenance workers have lost the privilege of using their school vehicles to drive back and forth to work in an effort to reduce transportation costs that began when gas prices approached $4 per gallon.

Last month, Jeff Dill, director of the School Maintenance Department, voluntarily gave up the take-home vehicle he had been using to commute from his home in New Hampshire to Haverhill. He did so after School Committee member Scott Wood Jr. made public his efforts to stop the maintenance vehicles from going home at night.

Wood's colleagues on the committee have agreed with him to end the practice for all but one on-call maintenance worker.

Wood acknowledged ending the practice will not save a lot of money, but said the cash-strapped district should do what it can to eliminate wasteful spending given crowded classrooms, high fees for students to play sports and other problems caused by budget cuts.

"It's a symbol that we are doing what we can," he said of eliminating the take-home vehicles. "Just saving a thousand here and there is important right now. It's redundant to have four on-call workers taking their school vehicles home every night."

Wood's colleagues agreed, voting unanimously last week to end the practice. They agreed to allow one maintenance worker to take a school vehicle home at night on a rotating schedule. That on-call worker will be responsible for responding to emergencies at night, such as a broken water pipe in a school.

Earlier this summer, Mayor James Fiorentini took away 11 take-home vehicles belonging to five police officers, four meter readers, a health inspector and a firefighter. At the time, he said 59 workers were taking their city-owned vehicles to and from work, and that his goal was to trim that total by at least 10 percent.

The city has a total of 235 vehicles, and officials have said cutting gas consumption by just one gallon a day for each vehicle could save the cash-starved city up to $100,000 per year. The City Council also has been pushing the crackdown on take-home city vehicles.

When considering the use of school maintenance vehicles, Wood said he called several neighboring communities — including Methuen, Lawrence, Lowell and Danvers — to find out their policies for maintenance vehicles. Those communities either prohibit any maintenance vehicles from going home at night or allow just one on-call worker to take a vehicle home on a rotating schedule, similar to how Haverhill will now be doing it, he said.

Dill has not returned phone calls seeking his comments on losing the maintenance vehicles.

Superintendent Raleigh Buchanan had opposed taking away any of the take-home maintenance vehicles because he said he did not have a safe overnight place to park the vehicles, which are filled with expensive tools. Last week, however, Buchanan said he has received approval from the mayor to store the vehicles at the Highway Department garage on Primrose Street. That complex includes an area that is locked at night and monitored by video cameras.

"Some people may have wanted to continue allowing the vehicles to go home," Wood said. "But they had no way to justify it."

Wood also had questioned the practice of allowing 12 school transportation vans to go home with workers at night. He said he no longer has a problem with those vehicles going home because the workers live in Haverhill and they are required to clean and maintain the vehicles in exchange for taking them back and forth to work.