The Town of Decatur is making an emergency $13,850 purchase to replace a wrecked police car. In a Board of Aldermen meeting Tuesday, Mayor David Marshall told the board one of the town’s police vehicles was wrecked and needed to be replaced.
“We’ve got a police car that was involved in a small accident, and it’s going to end up having to go into the shop at some point to be repaired,” he said. “It’s probably going to be out of service for 3-4 weeks while it’s in the shop.”
Marshall said the town needed at least three police vehicles to maintain the proper level of police protection, and the wrecked vehicle left Decatur Police Department with just two.
“We need to do an emergency purchase because we’d be down to two vehicles and we need to have a third one for police protection,” he said.
The vehicle the police department wants to purchase, Marshall said, is a used car from the federal government used on the Natchez Trace.
It’s a Natchez Trace vehicle,” he said. “A federal car with 85,000 miles. I’ve seen it. It’s got one door ding on it. It’s a very clean vehicle.”
In addition to purchasing the vehicle, Marshall said the town would also need to outfit it for use by law enforcement. That included adding a push bar, lights, a siren, radar, radios and camera system.
Some of the lights and equipment can be moved from the wrecked vehicle to the new car, cutting down on expense, Marshall said. The cost to outfit the car would be $4,400.
The new vehicle would also need to be lettered, which would be an additional $800.
Alderman Mark Buntyn said the town previously received a $21,000 insurance payout from a police vehicle totaled in late 2019. He said using those funds would be just enough to cover buying the vehicle, installing equipment and lettering.
“It’s about a wash,” he said.
After consulting with Board Attorney Mitch Thomas to make sure the proposed action was legal, the board approved the emergency purchase, upgrades and lettering of the police vehicle.
In Tuesday’s meeting, the Board of Aldermen also approved spending $996 to replace the springs on the fire station bay doors.
Fire Chief Raymond Overstreet told the board in January the springs had broken, making the doors inoperable. At that time, he said he had had the springs patched; however, they would need to be replaced.
After outlining the project, which includes replacing six large springs, two for each of the three doors, Overstreet said he received three bids. The lowest bid of $996 came from Patrick Allen.
Marshall said Patrick Allen has done several projects throughout the town and has one pending from a bid in November.
“Patrick Allen is also the one that did the maintenance shop door,” he said. “We accepted the quotes back in November, and he’s finally got the parts.”
Marshall said Allen planned to work on the maintenance shop door early next week. He said it might be possible for both projects to be done at the same time.
