CORNELIA - The City of Cornelia soon will have 15 new vehicles providing service to its residents.
Tuesday night, the city commission approved the purchase of six patrol vehicles and five administrative vehicles for the police department, a garbage truck, a pickup truck for the animal control department and two pickup trucks for the public works department.
The style of police vehicles will change significantly with the new purchases.
"Instead of sedans, we're actually going with sport utility vehicles that are made for law enforcement," said City Manager Donald Anderson. "The patrol vehicles will be a Ford Explorer that is called a Ford Utility Interceptor, which is basically a Ford Explorer but it's made for law enforcement.
"The admin vehicles will be Dodge Durangos that are called Dodge Special Service Durangos," Anderson said. "They're not capable of patrol, but they're a little more heavy duty for wear and tear for police work, but not patrol work."
The Ford Utility Interceptors will be purchased under state contract from Wade Ford in Smyrna, at a total cost of $165,768.
The Dodge Special Service Durangos will be purchased from Hayes Chrysler Dodge Jeep of Baldwin for $137,413.
The cost to outfit the vehicles with lights, sirens and a variety of other necessary equipment will be $38,710.42 from Emergency Equipment Specialists of Bethlehem.
Total cost for the 11 new 2016 police vehicles with new safety equipment will be $341,891.42, a figure $16,6000 less than the amount budgeted.
Anderson said city officials hope for better vehicle life from the new SUVs.
"With the sedans, we're getting maybe six years, and we think we can get eight or nine years out of these because they're heavier duty," Anderson said. "Plus, if we have inclement weather, they're all-wheel drive - they're better equipped to handle it. In years past, if we had snow coming we had to come up with several four-wheel-drive vehicles and convert them to police vehicles so our police department would be able to patrol the streets and keep us safe."
Currently, the department is running five Ford Taurus Interceptor sedans and about a dozen other vehicles, mostly older Ford Crown Victoria Interceptors.
Ford discontinued production of the Crown Victoria Interceptors, replacing them with the Taurus Interceptors several years ago.
Now, more than half the fleet will be SUVs.
"We'll have these 11, and we have five of the Ford Taurus Interceptors that have been bought over the last three years that are still on the street in good shape and we should get several more years out of those."
Anderson said the police vehicles were included in the city's portion of Habersham County's current Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.
Other vehicles will be paid for by city funds.
The new pickup trucks are long overdue, replacing a 1995 Ford Ranger with a transmission issue, a 1989 Chevrolet S-10, and an unreliable 2004 Chevrolet Blazer, Anderson said.
The city is purchasing two 2016 Ford F-150 V6 four-wheel-drive pickups for $24,974.48 each for public works, and a 2016 Ford F-250 diesel for $31,987.90 for animal control to accommodate a slide-in box unit.
"Our public works department has kind of, I'm not going to say neglected but because of the economy and the shrinking revenues, we've had to push things off, and one of the biggest things we've pushed off is pickup trucks for them to drive in," Anderson said. "Most of the trucks they drive are pre-2000 models. Some of them are even back in the '80s."
The total purchase price for the three trucks from Cain Ford in Cornelia is $81,936.86. Two other Ford dealerships failed to submit requested quotes.
One of the pickup trucks, for the water/sewer department, will be paid for with cash from that department's enterprise fund.
"All the other vehicles are being purchased through a five-year GMA lease/purchase," Anderson said. "GMA is the Georgia Municipal Association. It's at 1.98-percent interest over the five years."
The total cost for the lease is $511,792.80, with the portion of the lease for the police vehicles being paid from SPLOST proceeds designated for that purpose. The remainder of the lease will be paid with the city's general fund revenue.
Anderson is aware there may be backlash from the city purchasing so many vehicles at one time, but he notes the purchases are coming in under budget and, in fact, are overdue.
"I know that a lot of people are going to say that we're getting an influx of vehicles, but if you look at what we're saving on those vehicles, it definitely showed that buying more than one or two a year brought that price down," Anderson said.
Anderson said administrative vehicles throughout the rest of city government actually are older police cars dating back to the early 2000s, and those two or three vehicles will be retired and replaced with some of the best Crown Victorias being retired at the police department when the new vehicles arrive.
Currently, the police department fleet consists of 18 vehicles, 16 of which are assigned and a couple that are used for part-time personnel or as back-up vehicles, Anderson said.
The new 10-yard Pac-Mac RL10 garbage truck is being purchased from Carolina Environmental Systems for $112,939. The new compactor truck, on a Kenworth K270 chassis, is smaller than the city's current garbage truck and will eliminate the need for a CDL driver and will be able to serve tighter areas than the one currently in use.
Other quotes received for the garbage truck were $119,529 and $127,500.
Anderson said once the 2016 budget was approved, city leaders opted to go out for bids with time remaining in 2015. Even though the vehicles won't be paid for until 2016, they are being purchased at 2015 prices.
"By getting the bids this year, it brought the price of the garbage truck down, because the quote that we had actually had for the budget purpose was $130,000, but that was anticipating us buying it after January," Anderson said. "I know a lot of people are going to question it, but really I think it's smart budgeting and it's being very frugal with the taxpayers' dollars."
